


Bad Moon

by charliewalkertexasranger



Category: Scream (Movies)
Genre: Afterlife, Blood, Blood and Gore, Chaptered, Character Death, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Depression, Epic Battles, Everyone is Dead, F/F, F/M, Gen, Heaven vs Hell, Hoarding, M/M, On Hiatus, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Putting all the dorks in a room and having Trevor play straight man, References to Canon, References to Depression, Robbie Mercer is the drunk guy who walks into a glass door only to walk into it again, Sidney and Tatum are like everyone's lesbian moms and it's great, Slow Build, Songfic, The Dark Forest from Warriors I mean a totally original idea, Welcome to Club Gay I'm Charlie and these are my associates Mickey and Robbie how may we help you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-05-13 01:10:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14739260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charliewalkertexasranger/pseuds/charliewalkertexasranger
Summary: Years after the final strike of Ghostface, the killers, exiled to a shadowy forest on the outskirts of the afterlife for their crimes, have found a way to bridge the gap between the living and the dead and exact revenge on those who survived them. However, their dead victims are not about to let this be Sidney's final act, and those touched by Ghostface may never find peace again.ON HIATUS: SEE NOTES FOR INFORMATION.MOST RECENT UPDATE: 2/20/19





	1. Charlie and Mickey - Been to Hell

**Author's Note:**

> **UPDATE 12/28/18**
> 
> I don't wish to share any more information, but I've been working on this project since May and I've had the idea for more than a year (my oldest prototype story with this concept was from November 2017), so I'm going to assert that I have no intention to abandon it. However, I've recently had a lot of traumatic events occur in October that are still affecting me now and I just don't have the motivation nor the stability to work on this project. 
> 
> When I return, I will be rewriting every chapter thusfar to revise plot threads I feel didn't accomplish what I wanted them to accomplish or weren't explored in enough detail. Well, that, and update the prose as my style has improved tremendously since May and the first few chapters make me, for lack of a better term, _cringe hardcore_. Hopefully this leads to a much better and more cohesive fic for everyone, and lessens the "quality jump" I've noticed between the first and second half (or maybe I'm the only one who noticed that).
> 
> I do intend to come back and finish this, but I'd rather just be transparent about the current lack of updates than pretend I'm still actively working on another chapter right now when I'm not. 
> 
> Thanks for checking in, though, and I assure you this is going to get done as long as I don't die trying.
> 
> **UPDATE 1/19/19**
> 
> I'm considering removing the fanfiction.net cross-post as I can't be assed to update it. It still doesn't have "Monster", which came out on my birthday... in late September. _Oof_. Whether I actually take it down remains to be seen, but I hate that fucking website, so take that as you will.
> 
> I'm still not out of the woods yet life-wise, but I've decided to start rewriting "Been to Hell." Maybe you'll get an update soon, maybe not. I have court on the 29th, and that's the deciding factor on how the update schedule will go. I'll post another update then if I'm able.
> 
> **UPDATE 2/20/19**
> 
> Trying to fix my horrendously cursed worldbuilding has not been fun, exactly. That's all I'm going to say. No update except that I'm far enough along to feel the pure agony of unfortunate implications.

Where they reside is cursed with the affliction of a permanent night.

Or, at least, that's what they call it. They're not really sure what it is. It's not something they can find a cause for and identify; none of them are scientists, or anything like that. It's just... dark. All of the time. It never matters when they go to sleep, not that they ever find a need to, because when they awaken, it is as black as midnight, with a thick, foggy smoke that descends over the trees and clogs their lungs, making extensive running or fighting or whatever they want to do that is labor-intensive impossible, even though all of them think it's a very dumb idea to go stumbling around in the undergrowth at top speed with no starlight or moonlight to guide them.

There's nothing else, really, that is notable, except the night. There are thick clumps of ash-colored trees that span for as far as they can walk, and there are ferns, and moss, grass, and lichens, and fruitless shrubs and brambles, but all the plant life is gray or black, except the mushrooms that grow on the trees and old logs, which glow in a faint blue, the only color to the landscape. There's so little of note that one of them tried to get out, because it was driving him insane to only see that much scenery. He walked for hours straight, not even stopping to sleep, only to come right back where he came, standing in the gray grass of the clearing where he started his futile journey. The place feels infinite, because one could walk for several days before finding themselves back in their original position, but they are positive there are boundaries, even if they've never actually found the boundary; it's through their own observations, the stardust one of them found sparkling on a recumbent fern, blown in by the howling breeze, that they even know anything else exists.

It's a marvel that they found each other so quickly. Without the constant wandering they were sentenced to and the finite borders, they might have never met. It was pure luck that they stumbled upon each other over time, and pure luck, too, that they had the sense not to instantly define each other as threats and fight death battles with each other until one or none remained.

Today, the wind that sweeps the canopy of branches above is cold, and the grass swishes everywhere it isn't underfoot. It is as it usually is; dark, freezing, uncomfortable. Their bellies are empty, and that only adds to the uncomfortable feeling. There's nothing to eat; they don't need to eat. Food is for a past state, a state they no longer can say they hold.

Two of them are crossing the forest, on their patrol. They're sent out by the ones with the control over the others, the Father and the Son, as they refer to themselves, every day to scout for the boundary, to scout for new signs of life. There's no way any of them can know what's going on outside of the dimension, and it is always their mission to build power. With numbers, with new appearances, comes that power. They just never know where the new appearances may be.

It's generally just busy work, though, to keep them away from the project.

"This is such a crock of shit," one of them says.

He's short, and very slender, with long, thick hair. His gait sort of rolls, like he knows every step, like the ground is marked under his feet and he's memorized where his toes are to go; he's used to this duty. He's been at it every few hours for years. He doesn't keep count, none of them do, and since none of them age, they have no estimate, but he thinks it's been a little less than a decade since he ended up here. He might be the youngest soul, but he considers himself the most dissatisfied of the bunch. Low-ranking, fucked in life and in death, he usually stays quiet. It's the only way to guarantee his spot remains. If he's too vocal, the others might consider him a liability to their goal and plot against him, and, angry as he is, as _bitter_ as he's become, he cannot allow himself to be eliminated. He doesn't know what will happen if he dies again. He doesn't know what will happen if they all chase him out into the far reaches of the forest; he's not sure if anything is beyond this, if there's any place he could go to escape the hatred.

He's used to being quiet, though, even if it was never for his own self-preservation. For seventeen years, he was quiet as he could be, never bothered, never dropping his cool, calm demeanor for more than a few seconds. It is true, and remains so, that he never raises his voice, just as he never did in life.

"Quiet," says the other, after a few seconds. "You don't want them to fuck us over again."

"Oh, I was fucked over, alright," he says. "I was fucked over every day of my goddamn life. God, fuck."

He doesn't raise his voice, not even a little, true to form. It makes him sound funny, when he says something angry but doesn't get louder. He kicks a rock, sending it rolling over the forest floor to thump into a tree.

The other one rolls his eyes.

"Charlie," he hisses, venomous in his annoyance, even though it's all fake and he really thinks Charlie is the best he'll ever do for a companion. "Does it ever occur to you that I don't consider myself to actively care about how few times you got your dick wet, and how the only pussy you ever got to touch was lined with razor-sharp teeth?"

"How did you reference that movie?" Charlie sputters. "You died in the _90s_."

"What movie?"

"Oh."

They keep walking.

"It's not a masterpiece or anything, but it's about this girl with teeth in her vagina," Charlie says. "Robbie and I watched it once because we were curious. It was okay, I guess."

"I wanted to blame the movies. If I'm stuck in this dump, at least I'm stuck here with a horror geek, even if he can't stop talking about his boyfriend."

He shoots Charlie a snide glare; Charlie folds his arms tight to his chest, like he's protecting himself. There's a big spot of blood on his white button-up shirt, tattered with age, in two different places—one is by his sternum, and his forearms cover it when he moves them.

"He was _not_ my boyfriend. I can have a gay best friend without dating him, Mickey."

"That's what they all say," Mickey says.

He's a bit bulkier than Charlie, wide shoulders and a thick torso making him stand out next to the scrawny post of a boy that walks next to him. His hair is near-black, and a little spiky—he's intimidating. His black eyes glow brown at the pupils, a mark of his past life, and as he moves, he drags his feet, kicking them against the fat clumps of black dirt and furled gray bracken, but only to keep up with Charlie; Charlie, being small, short, has legs too stumpy to walk very fast.

They close on through the forest, beneath a blackened sky and a swishing canopy and swathes of dark, thick mist. If blood ran in their veins, it would be cold. They are both disenfranchised, frozen in place by social circumstance. It would be wonderful, for them, if the plan went through.

But they're not sure about the plan. One is more confident than the other, but neither are positive, willing to put their lives behind it.

"Do you think it'll get us anywhere?" Mickey asks, just because he's terrified of the silence. Before he ended up here, he was scared of nothing. He lived his life a murderer, after all. To kill meant that you weren't at all scared of the consequences, prison, a trial, the judgement of the media, and, perhaps, of not a thing at all. But the silence in this place is too silent, too haunting; it runs through the bones and blood and brain and hollows out the body until every breath and every thought is of the silence, and Mickey hates that too much to stay quiet. It's why they talk, instead of being quiet. That and the fact that if anyone else is here, ends up here, the sound of their voices may attract them, and that they were given orders to make as much noise as possible, for that reason.

Charlie catches what he says, and his eyes grow a little wider. His long, sweet features become perplexed, like he's not exactly confident in his own opinion, and he isn't. He wants it so damn badly, for it to mean something, for it to become something. But his faith is stretched thin, these days. It has to be. He's been hurt too, too many times, and he finds it difficult to trust, to allow himself a lapse in skepticism. He just can't bring himself to believe anymore, not the way he used to. He's too broken, too cynical.

And it is a very difficult thing to believe. They say they've found a way out. That they're actively _working_ on that way out, when a way out is something all of them have dreamed of for a very long time, an _upwards_ of what a long time might be considered. Every minute feels like an hour, where they are. Every day drags on into a week, a month, a year, and no difference does it ever make, the time. There is still hollowness and hunger and an aching, pained need for revenge that burns in each of them. The notion that it all could be satisfied, that such a solution exists, is too much for Charlie to put his trust in. Not after he keeps getting lied to and having his faith defied.

He pauses for a moment. He isn't of the full belief that he can say anything. His brow furrows.

There's so much in his mind, at all times, so much acknowledgement that he has been used and abused and turned into a slave, that it almost blinds him to anything but his own craving for the satisfaction of respect.

"No," Charlie says. "There's no way out of here. They don't even believe in it themselves."

"Of course _you'd_ say that. If they don't believe in you, then they don't believe in their project, right?"

"They hate you as much as they hate me. We should do something about it."

"Someday."

Charlie stops.

"She killed me, you know."

"I was betrayed too. But you know that."

Mickey comes to a stop, too, and puts a big hand on Charlie's shoulder, where it seems to fit perfectly. In the black forest, which stinks pungently of the reek of wood rot and thick green mold and old, unwashed copper, they are not free, and it burns through them every day. Charlie would do something about it but give up without support, or if a better offer presented itself in the bargaining, and Mickey knows that, and that is why he doesn't act. That, and the suppressed love and respect for their masters that they both carry, unwilling to admit to each other the real reason they don't attempt an uprising.

"Of course I know your story," Charlie says. "I watched _Stab 2_ all the time."

"Then you'd know I still have some kind of reason to trust mine," Mickey admits with a strange sheepishness in his voice as he puts his other hand into some kind of an awkward gesture. It's a feeling he doesn't know well, to feel shy, overwhelmed. He's tried to act it, in life, to fake vulnerability, but he's never truly... felt it. It's a side effect of defending his viewpoint. "She's determined to get back. Something might come out of this, man. Take it from a college student; I'm older than you, and I know patience better."

Charlie shakes his head.

"Mickey, you're delusional. There's no way out. Nothing we can do. Something, something bigger than us, put us here, and it put us here for punishment. That's the only reason we can't find anyone else; this place was intended for us."

There's a brief pause, just short enough it doesn't drive Mickey insane.

"Believe what you believe, Charlie."

Not far away, and unbeknownst to them, the plan turns from concept to reality. For the first time since the blackness of death, the group will be satisfied.


	2. Robbie - Invisible

Robbie hasn't seen _him_ since he died.

Robbie hates himself for not carrying a photograph or a memento on him when he was killed, not that he really could have known he was going to die, but there was quite enough indication that he should have at least prepared, but he was too dumb and too drunk. When he died, he shut his eyes and went and he reappeared here in his favorite _Stab_ shirt, his most comfortable jacket, a nice pair of pants, the bloodstains gone and his body restored, the only echoes of his stab wounds the white lights that filter out of where they were, the ones he can only see when he strips himself naked. In any other situation, he'd be very satisfied that he doesn't have to wear a white robe, and he can just sit around all day in peace wearing what he would always want to wear in life. But his camera got knocked off during the struggle that killed him and his phone ended up somewhere on the deck, and he doesn't have any way he can either continue his hobbies or see _him_  again, and he's discontent with that. It haunts him every day, the boredom, the anger, the knowledge that he's stuck here without the person who matters to him most.

Without _him_.

Robbie misses _him_  so much. He's met with a lot of people since he got here, even though it doesn't break the loneliness present without _him_ around; Trevor lives, or, whatever they are doing, because it's certainly not living, not far away, and though they had a mutual hate in life, time and the seriousness of their condition has granted them a new lease on their relationship. They don't talk about _him_ , though. Whenever Robbie brings _him_  up, Trevor's forehead furrows, his eyes become pained, and he looks down at his feet, unwilling to answer. Robbie wonders why that is.

In the time he's been given since he got here, Robbie has come to accept that he spent four long years of his life with feelings for _him._  He could never do it in life, admit that—he was too young, too self-loathing, lacking touch with his own mortality and how important it really was to accept himself while he was alive—and his secret, his sexuality, haunted him until long after he was dead.

They keep time here. It's been eight years. About three years after he died, Robbie accepted that he was gay, and that he loved _him_ , and that the abscence would only make his heart grow fonder, as the old adage says. He doesn't know where _he_  is, and part of him doesn't want to know. _He_ could be dead and lost in the same world, inches away but so, so far, or _he_  could be alive and living as a hero, a great survivor of the carnage that took his best friend. Robbie hopes _he's_  still around. It'd help the pain he feels every day, even if Robbie won't see _him_ for many, many years, to know that _he's_ safe and happy and rich and famous.

Robbie's so in love with _him_  that he's not even sure what he's going to do when _he_  gets here. Would he run up the first time he sees _him,_  and kiss _him_  hard, and confess all the feelings that built up both in life and in death? Would he meet his best friend and just quietly confess? Would he hide his feelings and keep things the way they always were? Whatever he will decide to do, it all centers around _him_.

Robbie has a drawing he made. He's no artist, so the linework and what it curves into looks crude, childish, but it works as what it is. He spends too much time staring at it, thinking about the boy he lost, the boy he could have just told everything and been accepted by, maybe even embraced as a boyfriend, a lover. Robbie has anxiety all the time, about what he'd say, about if he's ever going to see _him_ , and the drawing helps, because it's a physical manifestation of all the desire he has furled up in his tiny geek body.

He's staring at it right now, fingers clamped and sweaty, vision blurred with the beginnings of the hot, wet tears that are flowing down his face. He doesn't know where _he_ is. He doesn't know. The proverbial concept of watching over your loved ones in death is a lie. He hasn't seen _him_  in eight fucking years, and he would do anything, anything at all, just to run his fingers along _his_  palm, just to see _him_  for a split second and make sure _he's_  okay. Robbie doesn't know what to do to feel better, and it's like he's cursed to this, cursed to feeling broken in this way.

He just wants to be around _him_ again. It hurts so bad, the constant abscence. It makes Robbie's heart ache. He wishes every minute of every day that he said something, that he got what he always wanted even though he was just too much of a coward to deserve it. He wants to lie next to _him_  in bed, and run his fingers up and down _his_  chest, and make love to _him_  until their spirits fade out into nothingness with time.

But Robbie was too scared to ever say that, and, now, when _he_ dies, if _he's_  still alive, he'll be gone, forever. Robbie fears that he won't even be recognized. _He'll_  be walking through the pink mists one day and Robbie will see _him_ , and when _he_ looks back, _he_  won't even realize who Robbie is. Was. Whatever.

It must be at least an hour or two of staring, hopeless, crying, chest feeling as if it will split in two, before there's a knock on the door.

Robbie doesn't want to talk. He's so sick of living here, in the tiny little houses in the neighborhood with everyone from where he lived when he was still alive. He's so sick of worrying about _him_ and the outcome of _his_ life. He's so sick of knowing pain and fear and grief in a place that is supposed to bring the dead together, a place that inspired the Biblical accounts of heaven. He's supposed to be happy. He's not supposed to have to grieve every day of all of eternity.

Robbie's debating whether he should answer when there's another knock. He doesn't want to get up. He wants to stay here in his chair and cry until _he_ comes back.

Maybe it's _him_.

Maybe _he_  did what he had to in order to find him, went to one of the kiosks scattered about, the ones he doesn't dare go to because he doesn't want to know, and talked to someone who searched his name and approximate year or location of death. Maybe _he's_  right there, and Robbie's just ignoring him.

That's the only reason he gets up.

He wants Charlie.

Robbie puts the drawing down and edges his way to the door. There's so much trash on the floor and strewn over the counter that he has trouble wading through it; it's about ankle-deep, after living here in filth for eight years. He doesn't have the strength or the motivation to clean up after himself anymore, even if cleaning up is as simple as taking the trash to the curb to be disposed of by someone who can better manage vaporizing it, and he finds it terrifying that there might be other people like him somewhere in this realm, hoarders and depressives and broken, broken people who can no longer take care of themselves. Sure, he doesn't need to shower or go to the bathroom or at all watch what he eats, but he still needs to shave, and have his hair cut, and he hasn't done either in a fair amount of time, so, now, he's a big mop of curls with a shaggy, thick beard, and he looks a mess, nothing like what he should look like when he's in heaven, the afterlife. He wonders that, if Charlie saw him, if he would even be recognized.

But he continues anyway, unembarrassed of his circumstance. The chance that it could be Charlie, come back for him, carries too much allure for him to stop.

He comes to the door and twists it open. He wishes he had a peephole. Then, he could look through and not even bother to answer.

They always said heaven was supposed to be paradise, and, furthermore, that Robbie would probably never get to go there because of his persistent feelings for Charlie. But Robbie doesn't even want to be here, even if he's been gifted with a privilege to be here despite being gay. He guesses that it was one of the things warped into the Christian Bible. It's not like there's a god. It's more like things just... exist, the way they are. And he doesn't want to be part of that existence. For one, he does _not_ get everything he wants, the peephole included. For two, Charlie isn't here, and he won't be able to relax without knowing where his Charlie ended up.

Eight years of constant anxiety led to him opening this door. Eight years of decisions and thoughts and words, and if anything happened differently, he might not be here. It weighs on him all the time, what he could have done differently to stay with Charlie.

He can only hope Charlie's back for him.

But it isn't Charlie. Charlie is short, and thin, and has long, thick hair and sweet features. Trevor, however, is none of that.

Robbie hates it when Trevor checks on him.

"Hey," Trevor says. Robbie sees how his eyes sweep the garbage, but Trevor's used to it, and he says nothing; he comes over every week or two, just to make sure Robbie is okay, and with every week or two, Robbie's hoard gets bigger. Robbie doesn't even amass it all like a normal hoarder does; he doesn't find enough pleasure to eat or drink, and since he doesn't need to, he doesn't. Sometimes he goes out and raids trash cans, just to have something of his own, just to have something because he'll never have Charlie.

"I wanted to see how you were holding up," Trevor says.

He smiles weakly, gleaming eyes glossy. Robbie looks up into the little white light coming from his forehead, where he was shot. He doesn't like to make eye contact with Trevor; that's where he usually stares. Robbie doesn't like him. Robbie never liked him. They're much better friends now, but they were never less than enemies in life. Charlie hated Trevor, and Robbie found that enough reason to hate him, too. And then they died in the same massacre Robbie can only presume Charlie made it out of, if his abscence means anything, and now, Trevor wants to be Robbie's best friend and look out for him. It makes no sense, to Robbie, and he'd rather die again than have Trevor trying to protect him at all hours of the day, but he puts up with it because he wants someone, anyone, and perhaps Trevor is just enough.

"I'm fine," Robbie hisses. He tries to be nicer to Trevor, who only cares because he's a better person than he once was, but it's too difficult, some days, when the memories become too much. "You can quit coming over. I don't need you."

Trevor shrinks back, visibly not having expected that response. His eyes are filled with regret, and he frowns, shamed.

"You don't look fine, Robbie."

"Of course I don't look fine," Robbie answers back. "He's still gone."

"Yeah," says Trevor. "But you're here, dude. You're okay. And... he'll be back for you sooner than you think."

Robbie rolls his eyes. Charlie is twenty-five. If Robbie's lucky, Charlie will die in fifty years. If not, he could live another seventy-five or eighty. Robbie can't take Trevor's talk, and the little warble in his voice when he mentions that Charlie is coming back. The stumble and the inflection makes him sound untruthful; Robbie doesn't like that. If he's going to be lied to, he'd rather it not be about Charlie, who was his reason to live. They used to sit up for hours on the weekends watching horror movies and dismantling the tropes. They used to stay together as much as they could at school just to have someone to rush a chat with in the three minutes between classes. They'd host parties and get drunk and be everything Robbie wanted out of a relationship like that. They were like brothers, if brothers had a one-sided sexual attraction that was acknowledged by both of them but left unacted upon. The removal of that relationship through death of a participant was too much for Robbie to take.

He wishes that the atheists were right, and all he could see ended up being black, no thoughts, no existence, just void. It's too much for him to deal with this every day for the next sixty years while he waits for Charlie to die.

"No, he won't. He'll never come back," Robbie says, out of defiance, and Trevor's eyes light up with panic. He stands there for a moment, looking as if Robbie just revealed his most scandalous secret to an entire crowd of listeners. "No one wants me. Why would he ever come back for _me_?"

"I want you," says Trevor.

There's a pause so strong it could have moved the Earth.

"Okay," Trevor finally says, softly, like it hurts him to say so. "I think it might be time to tell you. You should sit down for this."

Robbie can't bring himself to care. He usually at least acknowledges that Trevor cares about him, even if he's not happy enough to enjoy being around Trevor. But today, he can't do anything. He just doesn't want Trevor around right now. Not when he's sad and tired and so, so weak with missing and sorrow.

So they pad through the trash to the table, all because Robbie is weak and won't object; Trevor takes big, tall steps, like he can't quite lift his feet high enough to get through the clutter on the floor that Robbie's too broken to clean. He's so used to this that he doesn't say anything, knowing it's too futile to advise Robbie to clean up after himself to even make an attempt at it. He cares much less than he comes off as caring.

Robbie seats himself at the chair he was crying in. The drawing's laying there, right on the surface of the table, where he left it. He's apathetic that Trevor will see it. He doesn't care about anything, anymore. It doesn't matter. Nothing ever matters.

Trevor finds a spot across from him, though dragging out the chair through several inches of heavy trash is not an easy feat. He pulls the chair out and sits down. His face is red for no particular reason, a rose-pink that drools out around the stubble on his jaw and his thin cheeks and his forehead. Robbie can't find a reason why he seems so upset, but he does; Trevor's eyes are pained, and he breathes heavy, deep, like he's about to lose something. Maybe it has to do with whatever he's come to confess. Whatever it is, Robbie knows it can't be worse than what he's already gone through.

Losing Charlie taught him what real pain is like. After eight years, he's still a wreck, in a place where he can drink and eat copious amounts and party and meet new people with no consequences, if he really wants to.

Trevor's worried gaze flicks to the drawing.

"D-Did you dr-draw... did you draw that?" Trevor asks.

Robbie nods.

Trevor takes a deep breath.

"I told Olivia, and Olivia and I told you about Jill, but we left something out."

Jill was the friend who turned out to be the killer who ended Robbie's life and either killed or terrorized Charlie. She killed Trevor, and witnessed the partner who Trevor says was uncaught kill Olivia, and she killed or attacked numerous other people. The only confirmed survivor was their friend Kirby, who Trevor asked about but couldn't find any evidence of her death, and then relayed that information to Robbie. Robbie wonders what, eight years later, Trevor could possibly have to say about Jill. It's been so long, and the story of what he was told so long ago was so complete that Robbie doesn't even know what could be hidden from him. Jill went crazy after Trevor cheated on her. She wanted to upstage the cousin that survived multiple murder sprees. It was all that simple.

And now Trevor's saying it's not?

Robbie runs his fingers through his beard.

"Nervous tic," he says, in the space between Trevor's introduction and his confession, because he doesn't want to think about all the terrible things Trevor could have been hiding.

Trevor hangs his head and mumbles something that Robbie doesn't hear.

"What?" Robbie says, desperately in need of clarification. This could mean so much, whatever it is he has to say.

Trevor looks up. His words are slower and clearer this time.

"I am _so_ sorry, but... I've been lying to you, because I knew it'd hurt you worse if I told you. I didn't want to have to be the one to tell you, but I guess I don't have a choice, now," Trevor says. "I know who Jill's partner was."

Robbie doesn't know what to reply with, and he doesn't want to attempt to say anything. With his silence, there's a stunning pause, one that consumes the room. Why would Trevor hide that information from him? He, more than anyone, deserved to know. Robbie's been _betrayed_. Betrayed like no one has done to him, not since Jill.

He watches on, waiting for whatever else Trevor has to say.

And Trevor shuts his eyes, as if submitting to his own conflicted desire to continue.

"Robbie, it was Charlie."

Robbie groans, agonized, and drops his hand, the one he had in his beard, on the table with a resounding thud. Dumb fuck messing with him. Classic Trevor, which almost sounds like a type of jeans to him, so he changes it in his mind. _Pre-death_  Trevor.

"Trevor, that's not funny. I know we're both permanently seventeen, but you really need to grow up. I'm too sick for this shit."

He's so sick of Trevor coming over, so sick of his jokes and his concern and his dumb presence. Can't he see that Robbie just wants to be left alone, from now until forever?! Nothing will ever taint Charlie in Robbie's mind. He was—is—everything. And no bad joke, no bad attempt at messing with him, will ever take that away.

"I'm not kidding. It happened. He did it. You've spent eight years moping over losing that asshole because I didn't have the heart to tell you what he did to us, and, now, what, you're not going to believe me?!"

"So... you're not joking. It was Charlie."

Trevor nods, tears brimming in his bright eyes.

Robbie is shattered.


	3. Charlie and Mickey - Bad Moon

When they come back to the clearing empty-handed, the Son looks a lot less cross than he normally does. Even Charlie, oblivious to social situations, notices it as he draws closer through the undergrowth a few trees away from the opening; when he sees the Son's posture, tall and wide and proud instead of hunched, he knows something is up, and he elbows Mickey. They come to a stop in a clump of black, bushy ferns, and Charlie leans into Mickey's shoulder. He assumes, since the Son is facing away from them, and they're concealed in the shadows a fair distance away, that he won't be spotted just yet.

"Is it just me, man, or does Billy look like he just found a case of Mountain Dew on Elm Street?" Charlie whispers, careful not to be overheard.

Mickey chuckles, but not too loud, because he doesn't want to be caught talking about the Son, either. It's too much of a risk; when Billy finds out either of the two have been talking about him, he snaps, even though his entire goal in life was not only acting on murderous urges, but fame and attention. That's the kind of hypocritical treatment that comes with being the two killers nobody else likes once they're all dead.

Mickey takes a deep breath to recompose himself. He's got to stop laughing like that, when put into a situation so risky. But it's not his fault Charlie's witty and also good at turning his own misfortune into a constant stream of comedy, bitching about how he got killed and how Kirby never loved him until it was too late and how his only real friend was a gay guy with the hots for him.

"I don't know, man," Mickey says. "He might have just learned proper posture. They named themselves after God and Jesus, so it could be about time they start taking care of themselves. Look the part, you know?"

They both snicker and continue walking. They might be used to it, but it's not easy for either of them; their feet snag in the brush, and it's only Charlie who can still manage to look like he knows what he's doing. Mickey might have been good in the suit, and he might be just fine further out in the woods, but he's a little more clumsy waddling around in the knee-high brambles that surround the clearing.

The persistent rustling of feet tumbling in plants and snapping twigs and swirling dry leaves is enough to get Billy to turn around. Instead of frowning, like he usually does when Charlie and Mickey come back with nothing, his dark eyes are lit up, and there's actually the hint of a smile on his lips.

"You're back late," he says, in a sickly-sweet tone that forwards the notion that, today, he doesn't really care.

Charlie stops; Mickey stops beside him. Charlie shoots Mickey a desperate glance. He's never been comfortable around his idols, and while he can get by enough when Billy's not acting strange, he's probably lost.

So Mickey does the nice thing, or, the nicest thing a spree killer can do, and he takes over for the poor boy.

"We took so long because we put in effort. Right, Charlie?"

Charlie swallows and nods, looking straight at Billy like his neck is fused in that position.

"That's great," Billy says. He peers over his shoulder like he's about to tell a secret. Then he looks back. "We did it, guys. I figured I should have told you that myself, even though Stu and Debbie both offered to come wait for you."

Charlie stiffens next to Mickey. He's so confused. He doesn't even believe Billy, and yet, when he's looking straight into the eyes of his idol, his god, even after years of mistreatment at his hand, he finds it easy to swallow all that Billy's said. He didn't think they could do it, but Billy has no reason to lie to them and no ability to conceal that he's lied about something so big and in such need of concrete evidence. Charlie isn't sure who will go first, or what they'll do, or how they'll go about doing it, but he knows that's something the Father and the Son will figure out, and he can rest easy knowing he won't be given any of the overwhelming big decisions part of him hates and the other part wants so badly.

All Charlie can do is stutter out a few words in the space before a stunned Mickey planned to speak.

"You... did it? We can go back?"

Billy rolls his eyes.

"Of course, idiot. Now follow me. You'll be wanting to see this."

Mickey exchanges a glance with Charlie, whose glowing blue pupils, caught in a sea of black eyes, are lit with anticipation and a bit of fear. Neither of them can believe it, but at the same time, they know Billy isn't the type to mess with them about something as serious and game-changing as this, even if he's a psychopath. They're all psychopaths, but they don't mess with each other outside of what is necessary to build a hierarchy, because, really, they respect each other for all wearing the mask.

Billy starts across the clearing, over the field of short gray grass, and Charlie, nervous as he is, follows him. Mickey doesn't move. He isn't sure he wants to see them all again, and he isn't sure, too, that this is at all a good idea. If he has to admit anything, it's not that he thinks the plan is bad, but he really just doesn't want to go face-to-face with Debbie again. She might be the best mother Billy could have, and the best adoptive mother he could have, but even after so long, every time he looks at her, his unhealed gunshot wounds, the ones that still spit blood on occasion, the ones growing bright blue mushrooms and leaking pus, ache, as if his body recognizes what she did to him.

That's why Mickey doesn't like silence. He's in constant agony. He wonders if the others feel pain, too. He can't imagine what Charlie feels; he got a stab wound in the chest, right in his heart. Or Jill or Stu, who both were electrocuted as well as suffering multiple injuries. But Mickey, never one for self-pity, thinks he suffers the most. He was shot a number of times, in multiple places, and his wounds are all hotbeds for fungi. It hurts. And when it's quiet, he feels his pain more. He feels that he's injured and he feels that he's hungry.

Finally, when he fears Charlie and Billy are too far ahead, Mickey moves, taking long, quick steps, like he's on a moving treadmill that is going a little too fast, to clear the gap. He comes up next to Charlie. He has to admit, Charlie, for all his stewing about in pity, is a nice enough guy. Mickey doesn't think he could have asked for anything else in someone to be thrown under the bus and abused with. He wants to show that. He wants to tell Charlie that, no matter what happens, they'll have each other, the hated accomplices, the ones no one wanted.

He reaches for one of Charlie's blood-soaked hands, knowing Billy can't see it.

Charlie tenses up, but, then, he accepts.

And maybe Mickey feels something for the first time in his life.

They continue through the tangles of undergrowth, through the shadows of the forest. Where Billy is leading them, neither of them know, and it occurs to Mickey that, if it were anyone who didn't share the mask with him, he'd think this all was a trap. He's being led deeper and deeper into the dark trees by someone he only marginally trusts. Sounds like a trap if anything.

He keeps his hand tight over Charlie's; Charlie's presence is warm and comforting. It feels good, after so many years of being abused verbally and picked to do the dirty work, that he can finally cement himself an ally. What they mean is left to interpretation, really, or, at least, that's what Mickey believes. He's not ready to label what they've amassed over the past years.

He was the one who found Charlie, anyway, hunched and sobbing at the foot of a tree, tangled in a black clump of bindweed. The only light where he was, concealed deep in the forest, came from the glowing mushrooms on the bark, but that didn't matter, because he was crying so loud that anyone could have heard him. Mickey felt fantastic, because he'd finally found something to take home to Billy. The first time he saw Charlie, he was happy, and perhaps that stuck, even through all the pain they endured together and should have associated with each other.

He remembers walking Charlie back to the clearing and asking who he was, how many people he killed, if his plan was turning to be successful even without him, if he had an accomplice. Back then, _even_  back then, they knew that death brought them together, that the mask united them, that anyone who came would be Ghostface.

And Charlie had whined out answers, and Mickey felt bad, because he knew from just what he said, about being the accomplice, about being betrayed, that they were too similar, and that Charlie would be abused for the jobs no one else wanted, too, and that neither of them would ever gain the level of respect someone like the Father had.

"We're almost there," Billy says, peering over his shoulder.

Charlie yanks his hand away in a frenzy.

If Billy saw them holding hands, he says nothing.

Mickey is satisfied.

After a few more minutes of walking, all in that endless straight line Mickey and Charlie are too used to, Charlie sees twinkling lights in the distance, cutting through the smoke, and he leans over to Mickey, still in a state of disbelief.

"Dude, you see that?"

Mickey sees it too.

"Yeah," he says. "The fuck is that?"

Behind the shadows of the tree trunks, the lights continue to shine a white-blue. Every few seconds, they change shape, morphing from circular to spreading like floodlights to stars and back to circular again. They drown out the darkness, and, for once, Mickey can see Charlie clearly. He had no clue Charlie was so pale, and no clue that his hair was so pretty, even in death. He looked a lot darker before he could be seen properly. Dare Mickey say it, Charlie's handsome. He isn't sure why that Kirby bitch wouldn't want him.

Billy must have heard them, because he turns around.

"We found the weakest point in the realm and used it to construct an interdimensional wormhole with our collective life force," he says. "In terms you two will better understand... we done busted a hole in Hell. Step through, and you'll be back in Woodsboro."

Charlie raises his eyebrows, incredulous. And Mickey has to admit that he's in a state of surreal disbelief, too. There's no fucking way. But at the same time, there it is. Overwhelming proof that he did it. That all those days they spent wandering the forest like idiots were completely worth something.

When they come through the shrubs surrounding the little hollow where the portal stands, Mickey spots Jill, Debbie, and Stu standing in front of it. He hates seeing her face. Fuck Debbie. Fuck Debbie so much. He might still have a grudging respect for her, and he might still feel the need to call her his adoptive mother in his mind, because that's what she felt like to a boy whose real mother probably didn't even show up to his funeral, and he might recognize that she acted in the moment, and that trusting someone he met on a serial killer website may not have been the best of ideas, but he hates her for what she did, and every time he looks at her, he gets a little sicker. Thankfully, she's quiet. She lets her Billy do the talking. And that avoids some of the awkwardness.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Billy asks. Jill turns her head, evidently having heard him. She makes a gesture at Stu to get his attention, and he looks up, too. Debbie catches her son's gaze.

Charlie nods curtly.

"It's great," he says, clearly still hesitant about the whole idea, and Mickey can't blame him. As much as he's sure they want to go into the real world and stab the shit out of Sidney Prescott, he can't quite wrap his head around what Billy and the others did. "Impressive."

Mickey nods, too.

"You guys actually built this," he says.

"Of course," says Billy. "What, you think we just found something this close to the clearing? That's what we sent you out for. Looking for people and for crazy shit like this. And you went out periodically for eight years and never found shit, so... we had to do it for you."

Charlie is quiet and calm and doesn't dare talk back to the Son. Mickey is less reserved.

"Because you didn't just send us out for busy work? You had a plan?"

"Mhm."

"I _guess_  I can accept that."

"Nothing to accept," Billy says. "That's the truth."

Jill's eyes, crazed even in death, light up when they draw near. But Mickey isn't interested in her. He cares about Debbie. Even though it's been so long, he's still obsessed with letting her know that she fucked up by betraying him.

He gives her a glare. Charlie, however, is too hurt by Jill to do anything but look away. Mickey feels bad for him. He didn't deserve her. He's like his movie geek soulmate, and though he might be crazy, they both are, and they can be crazy together. That's what love is.

Not that he loves Charlie, of course.

Mickey's not sure he's capable of loving anyone.

Billy stops near the others, a few feet ahead of the lights. Debbie gives him a look of approval. She nods briskly.

"You found them, Billy."

Billy nods back. His eyes sweep over Stu, and Jill, and Debbie, each in turn. And then his mouth opens, and Mickey and Charlie both are not quite sure what to do.

"We needed them," he says. "The Father told me he wanted them to be the first ones inside."

Charlie's breath catches in his throat. He looks at Mickey. He's in a state of complete terror. He remembers the last times he felt like this—the most recent was when Jill pinned him against a tree for something Mickey said about her and threatened to sodomize him with a stick, and the first time was when he got stabbed in the chest and then in the gut and felt his life slipping right out of him like sugary fruit out of a slice of pie, like chunks out of the classic exploding head scene from _Scanners_.

Charlie looks over everyone, searching for any signs of disapproval. Mickey's face is lit with alarm. Stu looks thrilled, but probably only because Billy is speaking and everyone knows that Stu's a bit obsessed with him. Debbie doesn't really seem affected either way; she looks at her son with a glow in her eyes but no real expression on her face.

But Jill?

Jesus fuck, Jill looks pissed.

"Are you seriously going to trust _them_ with this portal that took forever to build?!" Jill squeals, terror in her dark eyes. She throws up her hands in a clear display of frustration.

Mickey feels offended. They did more work than anyone here, scouring the forest for newcomers, and these idiots pick at a project for multiple years, finally accomplish something, and then dare to imply that he and Charlie do no work, and can't be trusted? He glances to Charlie, who is visibly upset, tears welling in his eyes, his mouth agape. Mickey knows that Charlie doesn't like it when Jill is mean to him, just the way he feels uncomfortable around Debbie when she talks about him. Mickey knows that Charlie and Jill were lovers, once, and even though she killed him, Mickey can't help but feel that Charlie has lingering feelings for her, and that might be why he's so upset. Mickey makes a mental note to ask, even if he's sure Charlie will put up a tough act and not admit to anything, like he always does when they talk about Jill.

Billy cuts Jill down.

"No," Billy says. "Do you want to be the person stuck in there if anything goes wrong?"

Charlie is so angry. He's so hurt. That's all they care about him for. He thought they trusted him. He thought, maybe, he might finally be reaching the big leagues, and they could be giving him something huge as an opportunity to prove himself... but whatever. No one ever gave a shit about him, and no one ever will.

No one except Mickey.

Mickey is the only reason he doesn't grow bitter enough to hate his heroes.

It's ironic, then, that Mickey was his least favorite killer when he was alive.

Mickey looks at Charlie again. He can't believe that they're actually willing to sacrifice him. They might be respected less than the other Ghostfaces, but Mickey can't quite wrap his head around the fact that they're willing to let him die again or be trapped in an interdimensional portal. He is Ghostface, after all. They're all Ghostface. And Mickey thinks it's time they got a bit more credit for what they did. Stu was an accomplice, but he gets special treatment. Why can't Mickey and Charlie be the same?

Jill rolls her eyes.

"You're still trusting Mr. Crazy and a complete dork with our only chance to make things right again," she says. "Good choice."

Mickey thinks Billy might be scared of Jill. She's the most crazy out of all of them, and that's the only reason she can get away with talking to Billy like that.

Then something appears behind Billy in a puff of tan mist.

The Father.

His eyes glow brighter than anyone else's, and he doesn't walk, but floats, drifting across the ground without any need for movement. He can walk when he chooses, but that occasion is rare.

Charlie falls to his knees in a haphazard bow; the others follow suit. Mickey copies Charlie, but tries to be a little neater about the whole thing, palms on the ground, eyes low, legs bending carefully. The pain from his wounds make it difficult for him to bow down, but the Father has accounted for that, and he doesn't judge him, instead choosing to exact his power in other ways.

"So," says the Father. "It's come to this. Rising action. My soul shudders with anticipation, but I guess that would just be shivering, now, right?"

He lets out a sheepish laugh. His voice resounds through the entire forest, obviously hundreds of times bigger and stronger than it was in life, not that Mickey ever heard it then, because he died while the Father was still a nobody. But Charlie, fifteen years younger, did hear it, on a recording. Mickey asked him, once. And Charlie says it was much smaller and meeker then; death must have known that he'd serve as their central leader and given him a voice that commands.

Mickey sees through the corner of his eye that Jill bows her head lower, a sign of respect. She always tries to turn these things into a contest. Mickey wants to punt her right out of her kneeling position and send her sprawling through the brambles, mostly for being a bitch but also for what she did to Charlie. Fuck her.

No one speaks but Billy, who remains standing; no one thinks they're allowed to but him. And, really, they aren't.

"We finished, Father," Billy whispers. "It's over. We can finally film the last sequel."

A smile chases across the Father's face. His gaze crosses over his disciples.

"Charlie," he calls. "Mickey."

Mickey stumbles to his feet; Charlie lifts his head.

"Yes, Father?" Charlie asks. His voice is low, fearful. The Father's power is too great for him, and there's no reason it shouldn't be. Charlie spent his entire life worshipping and admiring him and Billy and Debbie and Stu, and even Mickey himself, but perhaps Billy and the Father most, because Billy was the original and the Father acted alone. For him to cower at the Father's feet is all normal, for him. It's normal for all of them. He might not have been the first Ghostface, but he's the idea man. Without him, none of this would have happened. They would be living normal, boring lives.

Except Mickey. Mickey likes to think he'd have ended up killing whether the Father existed or not. He met Debbie on a serial killer website, anyway. He had an interest in hurting people. He wanted to like... make a skin suit and wear it, and make a belt out of braided intestines, and pump hydrochloric acid into people's urethras. Of course he'd end up killing.

"Go ahead; get in there. We can always get you back, and being stranded with Sidney may not be so bad, when you can terrorize that bitch of a sister for us," says the Father. "Go see what it does."

Mickey feels a lump swell in his throat. He might be crazy, and know he's crazy, acknowledge it, but he's not stupid, and he really doesn't want to get in the lights. What if he and Charlie are trapped there forever?

What if he and Charlie are trapped there forever...?

What if... he and Charlie... are trapped there forever...?

What if... he and Charlie... are trapped there forever... with no one to bother them?

What if he and the only person who treats him like he's a human being are trapped in another realm for years while the others try to figure out how to get them back?

Sign Mickey up.

He rises to his feet, matching the people around him. Charlie stays down. He's terrified, too scared to move, like his body is paralyzed with fear. Mickey offers him a hand and a knowing glance.

Charlie takes it and rises.

They stumble off toward the lights and hesitate at the edge, waiting for further instruction. Charlie can feel himself shaking.

"Bye!" shouts Jill. "We won't miss ya!"

Stu laughs, deep and rich in his throat, the way he always does.

"Jill's lying. We want a postcard! And guts. Bring back a spleen or something!"

"Be quiet," hisses the Father.

"Shh, Roman, I know, things are overwhelming for you. We all died and got trapped in a shadowy forest. We're sending our biggest idiots through an interdimensional portal we spent forever building," Jill says. "But you don't have to be mean to the special ed kid."

Mickey can almost hear the Father shake his head. Jill's the only one who can get away with that.

"I'm older than you," Stu remarks.

There's a pause that drives Mickey more mental than he already is.

"Okay. You two are good at following instructions," says the Father, in his too-loud, too-booming voice. "Step in. If it works according to plan, you'll end up at the last working payphone in Woodsboro, where you can make a call of your choice. Once you're through the interdimensional plane, you should be able to disappear and reappear as you wish, the way I can, as well as teleport around Woodsboro or back to here, but I can't confirm any of that. It's something about the magnetic fields between Earth and our realm that gives you that ability. I've harnessed mine; use yours to kill everyone who stood in your way."

The Father pauses.

"Except Sidney Prescott, of course. Fuck with her if you want, because I know you want to. But don't you kill her. Save that bitch for us. We all deserve to go end her."

Charlie nods, even though it's more than apparent to everyone that he didn't understand a word of that.

Mickey takes a deep breath, waiting for Jill to object again. Out of everyone, Debbie is the quietest. She hasn't said a word since the Father appeared. Mickey wonders if it's about him. She didn't know when he died that she'd have to come back and face him, and that awkwardness leaks through their every interaction, even if that interaction is marginal.

But no one objects.

So Mickey steps into the lights.


	4. Robbie - Lost In You

Robbie wishes there was no afterlife.

He doesn't want to be here, in the world where Charlie did it all. He doesn't want to have to know that, to, figuratively speaking, when he considers that he's already dead, live with that fact looming in his aching brain. He wishes there was only blackness.

He trusted Charlie. He _loved_ Charlie, more than anything. He wanted to kiss him and lie next to him and be everything to him. He still does, even if his trust has been eviscerated. He loves Charlie so much, and has been waiting for him so long, it feels as if he's been leaning on a boulder for most of his life and all of his death, and, suddenly, Trevor came by and tugged it out from under him, leaving him crashing onto the sand below in terror and confusion as every constant he's ever known fades into nothingness. He wants to yell at Trevor. He wants to get angry and deny it all. But Trevor has no reason to lie. He reasserted it. And something tells Robbie that Trevor wasn't kidding.

Robbie's so upset he can't even quite function right. He has to sit there for a second, reeling, before he can even speak again. The silence is haunting. It rings in his head and blurs his vision and clouds his unsure, unsteady thoughts. He doesn't even know how to speak again when he finally tries; he has to piece every word together syllable by syllable, and attempt to reconstruct something that sounds vaguely like human language. And he doesn't know the actual words. Piecing them together in functional ways, finding the exact right combination, is too much.

But after too, too long, after dragging himself through the edge of that pregnant pause, he dips his head and lets all his anxious words, so untidy and unconfident, escape.

"Tr-Trevor," he whispers, suddenly aware of the hot, fat lump rising in the back of his throat, stiff and heavy and choking him. "Please... just tell me it's n-not... true."

But Robbie knows it's true as he gives that command, and it's just his one final attempt at denial of something he already accepts as his new reality.

Charlie was Ghostface.

Charlie killed them. Charlie killed them all. Charlie might have even killed him.

And Charlie probably was the one who sunk a knife into Robbie several brutal times, so he's not sure why he still feels something when he pictures those striking blue eyes in his head.

Trevor says nothing; he looks away as if trying to distance himself from something terrible.

And Robbie knows that he's the disaster Trevor is attempting not to rubberneck. Robbie is sure that it is all over for him, and Trevor is just trying to be nice and give him dignity when he averts his eyes.

Robbie lets out a sigh, one that starts off normal and deep but quickly transforms into a retching sob Robbie wasn't even sure he was capable of producing, something from so deep down in his throbbing throat that he can do nothing but feel it.

"Ch-Charlie," he stutters. "Why him, man?!"

The interrobang actually stops in his throat; he can't talk over the pressure of what he knows, and his heart is so far up inside him, pounding violently, that he probably isn't able to choke out sounds over _that_ , either.

Robbie's whole body feels hot and cold at the same time, and his pulse runs shards of ice angrily through his veins, unable to stop, unable to calm down.

There's a long pause for him to cry in. He tips his head toward the table, until his forehead is pressed against his drawing, and he sobs his head off. Charlie. It was Charlie all along. He still loves Charlie, and that's why it hurts, that he did those evil things; he doesn't know if it's because the truth hasn't been processed yet or if his love for Charlie was always unconditional. It doesn't matter. Robbie was broken. Now, he is even more broken.

Robbie hears Trevor wade through the garbage and place a palm on his back. He's warm, and Robbie likes the comfort. He just wishes it wasn't Trevor here to help him. Trevor was always a jerk to him in life, and Robbie doesn't know if it was impending maturity or the serious solemnness of death that got him to give up his cruelty, but that doesn't matter, either, because he doesn't care. Robbie just wants someone to kill him again, so he can fade into nothingness and never think about what Charlie did ever again.

Robbie manages to gag out some kind of speech, but it doesn't make any sense, and he doubts that Trevor understands him within the flood of tears.

"Ch-Charlie! Why... why would... you did this, man! I... I just want him... I need him _back_! I can't fucking do this anymore!"

Trevor rubs his back, slides his hand up and down in a hopeless attempt to calm him, an attempt that isn't working and most likely never, ever will.

"Robbie," he says. "You're okay. You don't need him. He could have been the one who killed you. Do you really want him back after that?"

"Yes!" Robbie sobs. "Trevor... I love him, man! I wanted to spend my whole life with him, and I never got to say anything!"

He's never told anyone but himself that before, and it makes him explode inside when it leaves his lips. Trevor knows, now. And up until now, no one else did.

It's freeing.

"You... _love_  him?"

Robbie nods solemnly, as if he's just made a horrible mistake.

Trevor's hand slides up to Robbie's shoulder and then immediately tightens.

Robbie looks over to Trevor. Coming out was easier than he thought. He always expected Trevor, always the jock in life, to take it as an affront to his masculinity, to be around or seen with a gay guy, and perhaps, when he was alive, Trevor would have rejected him, not that Robbie trusted him enough to come out in the first place. But Trevor's changed, and maybe Robbie actually sees him as a real friend now. He kept that in for so long to protect him. That wasn't right, and Robbie's a little angry with him, but he understands what Trevor was meaning to do. He wanted Robbie to be able to have something to cherish in his memory, and to keep up the lies that pained him for so long was truly admirable of him.

He's the only thing Robbie doesn't want to leave behind. He could lose everything else and be fine, in the world where Charlie could be his murderer. But not Trevor. He's done so much for him, and it took him until now to realize it.

"Robbie, I know what it's like to love someone and then have them betray you. Now that I know you're gay, if I can throw that word around, and now that you know what happened with Charlie, I guess I feel really connected to you, because that means Charlie was to you what Jill was to me. And that means I have to tell you something else, as much as I don't want to."

"Yeah?"

Robbie is ready.

"Okay. Here goes," says Trevor. "If he died, and I have no doubt he did, given that I haven't seen Miss Self-Help Book here, and she ends up kicking the shit out of all the killers, I... know where you can find him."

Robbie's heart skips a beat.

"Oh my God," he whispers, soft, low, and more than humbled. "Thank you, Trevor...."

Trevor's gaze hardens.

And Robbie isn't sure why.

"But there's one condition. It's a shithole, man, and I'm not sure that you'll be able to come back."

"It's worth it to me," Robbie says, picking it right back up faster than he thought he would, and he can tell that his own face is lighting up, just from the warmth rushing through his veins. Trevor broke him, and then, Trevor saved him, and he's never been so happy. "Thank you so much, I can't even... I'm gonna _see him_! After so long!"

Then Robbie pauses, and he takes a moment to replay what Trevor said in his head and actually listen this time. He's not so sure, now.

"Wait," he says. "I... I can't come back?"

"That's what I said. Maybe, though. I've never actually been there. But the barrier may be—"

"It's worth it to me."

The agony and concentrated disbelief in the look on Trevor's face is something Robbie wishes he will never see again.

"Are... are you sure?"

"I'm in love with him. I don't care what he did; he'll always be the guy who carried me through four years of high school, and I don't know if I can give that up," Robbie whimpers, much calmer this time, with the knowledge that he could see Charlie again implanted in his brain. He might actually have a chance now, after eight years of not knowing if he'd ever lay eyes on Charlie again, and that rejuvenates him. "You've seen what a mess I am without him. I mean, look around yourself. If this were a movie set, it'd be _Mad Max_."

Trevor laughs. He actually has a smile now, and it's something Robbie feels like he hasn't seen in a long time, Trevor's smile. Sure, he's _seen_  it, but he's not sure the last times that it was genuine. It seemed more like a mark of pity, an attempt to convert him out of his crippling situational depression.

"That was all it took, huh? I thought you were, like, mentally ill," he says. "But let me tell you, if everything I've heard is true, you won't be making jokes when we get there. The place is terrifying. You'll probably get there and immediately want to turn back."

Robbie looks over the domain he's been condemned to for eight years, the trash strewn over the stained counter, the ripped couch with the human-shaped indent where he used to lie for days at a time, sobbing over what he lost, the refrigerator that has nothing in it because he doesn't need to eat and doesn't find any pleasure to even have a reason to do it anyway, with the endless drawings of his camera, the only thing he misses as much as Charlie, piled up on top. He could go get another camera, but he doesn't have the energy, and it doesn't bring his memories back, so he draws to cope and lets it all sit.

There's nothing left for him here.

"I've been broken for eight years," Robbie says. "And I've spent every fucking minute of those eight years thinking about him. Spree killer or not, I'm ready to see him. Even if it means I never see any of this again. Even if it means I have to spend the rest of my life in Freddy Krueger's waxy burnt dickhole."

Trevor closes his eyes and laughs again.

"Okay. You got me. I'll go wait by the door. Get whatever you're taking, and I'll get you out of this landfill."


	5. Sidney - Control

If Sidney is anything, it's utterly fucking confused.

For the past few years, she has been less of a wreck than she thought she'd be, thank you very much, no panic, no sorrow, just a lot of boredom as she sits on the royalties for the book she is actively still refusing her publisher's borderline harassment requests to author a sequel to.

She likes to think she has a life, now, one complete with friends and hobbies and a desire to continue. She has no fear; she doesn't really mind it down in Woodsboro anymore. She has a second home there, something she's able to afford as she's still a celebrity, and, in fact, more of a celebrity than she was this time ten years ago. Sometimes she goes to Woodsboro and stays for a few weeks at a time, visits Gale and Dewey, travels through her old haunts, not that any of her old haunts have good memories associated with them, after Tatum and Jill and all of the other people who crossed her path in those places and either ended up dead or murderers or both. She doesn't go often, though; there's only so many times someone needs to drive past her old school again, and only so many times she needs to close her eyes and see Billy Loomis or Tatum or a mangled, gutted corpse. Anyway, Woodsboro is probably the place she's most famous in, being her hometown, and she doesn't want the attention. So she only pops up periodically.

She got even more famous after Jill's attempted snuff film came to light, and, now, she doesn't have to work a day in her life. She played it smart. She did all the interviews and appearances she needed to do to bolster her savings and pay off her vicious hospital bills and physical therapy, and then, she withdrew from the public eye for what she hopes is the last time.

She doesn't want to be associated with what happened afterward, anyway. She misses the _90s_ , when the Internet was more of a fad than an instrument of society, before everything became a joke, before the toxic youth culture destroyed her life more than it already was after Jill. The public made atrocious comedy out of her tragedy. One of the death videos from the most recent killings, one of the ones that actually got uploaded onto the Internet by Jill and Charlie, probably as it happened—it's been so long that she can't remember the boy's name, even though she was surrounded by it for several months after the murders—got backed up by some sick fuck before the police took down the website, and he got turned into a short-lived Internet meme about a year back, long after the murders. Obviously, Sidney doesn't use the Internet anymore, because she kept stumbling into him, and it scarred her again, seeing that boy begging for his life while the commenters called him a gay icon and wrote fanfiction that shipped him with the Babadook.

She watched him die. The way he fell to his knees, eyes pleading for a god that wouldn't come for him as he choked to death on the blood that was seeping through his throat and into his mouth, will always be engraved in her very soul, and, yet, despite the traumas it left her already traumatized mind with, the world saw him as a joke, and there is nothing she can do to stop that. She's defenseless against it all, and when she's trying to recover from not one, not two, but _four_  murder sprees, it is painful and detrimental to ever feel defenseless.

She wishes she could remember his name. She supposes she could go through the old articles again, the ones she cut out of the newspaper and kept in case she ever needed them, but the memories hurt too much, and she just wants to maintain her quiet and secretive lifestyle, the one that never forces her to go through the killings in her mind ever again.

But, despite all that, she's back there again, back at the site of the first and last murder sprees, just for the month. She arrived yesterday and is somehow managing, despite the constant and chronic flow of memories, to finish getting her things unpacked, hairbrush and toothbrush arranged more neatly on the bathroom counter than she'd put them up the evening before, travel-wrinkled clothes held on hangers in the closet, all of the groceries that weren't time-sensitive or in need of a refrigerator and ended left in their bags for the night placed properly in the pantry, when there's a disturbance in the force, something that leaves her confused and disoriented and paranoid.

But this isn't fucking _Star Wars._  It means something, to her, even if it's just instinct, and she's never believed she had a Spidey Sense until now. She's just standing there, wiping down the dining table, and, at some point, it strikes her that something's not as it should be, and that she should go do something to stop it.

At any other time, it wouldn't affect her. She'd go back to doing what she was doing. Sure, all of the killers live inside her—she'll never shake them. But, usually, she can ignore them and their affects on her rattled psyche.

But today?

She can't ignore it. It's like television static blaring and buzzing and blurring in her fatigued mind, uncomfortable, unable to be ignored, and she can't do anything to get it to leave her alone but get up and find the source.

Where the source is, she'll never know.

And what she needs to do?

She feels about as useless as a plastic spoon in a steak-eating contest.

But on the off chance it'll make a difference, she leaves the comfort of her second home and sets out on a walk to either find what's triggered her or relieve the pain. She'll be able to ignore the cries of her name and the constant swarming attention for a few minutes, and it'll be pleasant to get outside.

She just hopes she'll figure it out before it's too late.

If there's even anything to figure out.


	6. Charlie and Mickey - Tag, You're It

When Charlie wakes up, his eyes burn from the brightness surrounding him, and he's standing on his feet, under a blue daytime sky. He catches sight of something large and unmoving below him. It takes him a moment to recognize it, because his vision is fuzzy and shaking, but when he does, a flood of worry rushes through him.

"M-Mickey... Mickey?"

Charlie hovers over Mickey's body where it lies hunched on the grass. A thin trickle of something white oozes from Mickey's lips, and his dark hair is disheveled, swept over his head in spiky clumps that desperately beg for some shampoo, a nice combing, and a cut. His skin is simultaneously pale and flushed, near-white at his hands and neck but pink at his face.

He doesn't stir when Charlie calls for him.

Shards of ice flutter through Charlie's aching veins. Maybe Mickey died again. Maybe something in that portal was so powerful that it killed him for the second time, and, now, he's not coming back. Maybe Charlie's all alone now, and he'll have to teleport back to the forest, where he'll be blamed and punished and probably beaten up or exiled, and he'll live in even worse misery forever. Being quiet and calm externally doesn't keep him from worrying like a motherfucker internally; it never did. When he killed, part of him was always considering the consequences of him being caught.

Charlie looks over the brick wall Mickey leans against, but then, he's mentally drawn toward the grass. It's nice to have some sensory stimulation for once, and it's incredibly relieving to him to see actual green grass again. If someone approached him on the street eight years ago and told him he would someday miss grass being green, he'd have asked which mental hospital they escaped from.

He gives it another moment, under the assumption that Mickey is probably just unconscious or feeling weak after encountering all that energy, but he grows a little more worried with every second that passes. He cares deeply about Mickey. Even though there's something in his eyes that says he constantly thinks about ripping out a woman's still-beating heart and using her aorta as a fleshlight, Charlie has found him to be one of the more emotionally approachable people he knows, though that could have just been the amount of time that they spent together, patrolling the forest. In fact, Charlie hasn't felt this way for someone since Robbie entered his life.

But he _killed_  Robbie while the guy was too drunk to defend himself, so that's not really a good way to judge any of his friendships.

Charlie can't help but feel a little bad for Robbie, though. Even when he was blinded by Jill, killing Robbie was one of the hardest things he ever had to do, only overshadowed by killing Kirby. However, he couldn't bring himself to do anything but stab her shallow and let her go; he actually killed Robbie, and that hurt even more.

But Mickey's his best friend, now.

He feels nothing for Robbie.

Ghostface now, and Ghostface forever.

Charlie reaches down and nudges Mickey's face with his knuckles. Mickey doesn't respond. Up this close, Charlie sees that he's still breathing—his chest moves faintly but with a strong rhythm. That, like the grass here being green, is very, very relieving. Charlie won't get his ass handed to him by the Father today. At least, he hopes he won't. Maybe some other reason will pop up. He never resigns himself to believing that someone won't hate him. Sometimes it feels like the only person who still likes him is Mickey. Maybe Stu, too, but that's only because Stu is the kind of crazy that is always in spirits too good to actually hate anyone, so it doesn't really count.

Charlie marvels at his luck, sometimes. When he was alive, his only real friend was gay and obviously longing to get into his pants, the girl he had a crush on decided to make her move on the night he decided to kill her on after he completely gave up on her, and his girlfriend made him give up everything for her only to stab him to death and frame him as the idea guy behind the murder spree he was only an accomplice to, and he was obsessed enough with horror movies that everyone would believe that. When he died, he got stuck with multiple people who hate his guts and don't respect him, and his only possible ally other than Mickey is only that way because he's mentally disturbed.

The only person who doesn't make his existence suck is Mickey, and if Mickey isn't going to get up, then Charlie is going to stay by him until he does.

But Mickey opens an eye, and pushes himself into a sitting position, and Charlie's heart leaps into his throat. Mickey's okay.

Except... there's one problem.

His eyes are still black, with the glowing brown pupils. And that means Charlie's probably are, too. And they're both injured and covered in blood.

How are they going to blend into living society?

Maybe they just... don't. Roman said they would be able to teleport.

A thought runs through Charlie's head.

_When you find the need to go somewhere, just focus your mental energy. Imagine that place. It doesn't matter if you haven't seen it before. Just paint in your mind what you think it looks like, and picture yourself there, standing right where you want to be. And you'll be there. Trust me. It works._

Roman's voice.

The extent of the Father's power never fails to impress Charlie. He said once that he was fed by the strength of the others. And they must be strong, because it must take a lot of energy to feed something as powerful as him. He's not even sure how they do it.

Mickey's head feels dizzy, and his vision is swirling, blurred. He doesn't remember where he is, or what he's doing—why is the grass green? Shouldn't he be in the shadows, under the canopy of gnarled gray branches, sitting on a fern or a mossy rock or in a pile of dirt? Shouldn't he be breathing smoke, and, most of all, shouldn't it be... dark?

It's not dark. Not at all.

And that serves as his first reminder of where he is.

He looks up at Charlie.

Reminder two.

And he just heard Roman's voice echoing through his head.

Reminder three.

Mickey allows himself the mercy of a cough.

"Jesus," he says. "Did you hear that, too?"

Charlie nods.

"I didn't know Roman could do that."

"If this were a movie, I'd call that a very lazy plot device."

"Ditto. Wait, does this mean he's always reading our thoughts?"

Mickey swallows.

If Roman knew some of the things he's caught himself thinking about Charlie... no wonder nobody takes him seriously.

_As a director, I admire your ability to notice what bad writing that would be. Also, I read all of your thoughts. Muahahaha_.

"He actually did an evil laugh. But he like... sounded it out," says Charlie.

Mickey wants to die. Again. It doesn't help that he has a splitting headache, one that feels like his head is being cleaved in two.

Then he spots something.

About fifteen feet away, on the sidewalk next to the alley they're lying in, is a payphone. It's an ancient thing; the glass box is busted on one side, like someone threw a baseball through it, and the paint, obviously dark blue at some point, has faded into a much lighter shade. Mickey can only hope the phone is intact.

But it's there. The payphone Roman told them about.

The last working payphone in Woodsboro.

"Hey, there it is!" Mickey says.

Charlie spots it. But he also spots the hole in the plan.

"Fuck," he says. "You got any change?"

Mickey wants to laugh. Roman was a director. He could have thought anything through, because it was his job to make sure every performance had all the right implications for the next one, that everything blended together with smooth edges. That's more of an emotional skill, though, but he had so much experience working with writers; he surely could have spotted that plothole from four hundred miles away. But he didn't. He obviously didn't use his best judgment here.

Charlie exchanges a glance with Mickey.

"Well, we're about as fucked as people's careers after being in _The Human Centipede_ ," says Charlie. "Hey. Wait."

He catches the bright glint of something on the ground near his feet, highlighted by the sunshine. He was so absorbed in making sure that Mickey was okay that he must not have spotted it.

Coins.

Three dimes and a quarter.

_Plot convenience_!

Charlie rolls his eyes.

"Father, I don't want you in my head anymore."

Mickey smirks. Surely the Father can't see how funny it is that Charlie's so frustrated, and, yet, he's too calm to do anything.

"Please, Father. Listen to Commander Suck here and go watch over the others. We'll be fine."

_I have better things to do, anyway._

Charlie takes a very deep breath.

"Okay," he says, bending over and scooping the coins out of the grass and into his palm. He puts himself upright. "I still know Kirby's old phone number. Let's pray she's alive and it hasn't been changed."

"Woah, woah," says Mickey. " _You're_  going first?"

"I'm not comfortable saying this with the Father in my head, but... I feel like I have to prove to Jill that I don't like Kirby," Charlie says. "I let her live, Mickey. Or... I tried. Maybe she's dead. I don't know. Plus, the Father said to leave Sidney alone."

"We could bother Gale. I'm sure she and Sidney aren't living together as lesbian lovers yet."

"No, let's start easy. Besides... I want to know. And I have the coins, so even if you object, I can just do whatever I want."

"And I can cut that hand off and use your fingers to stir the coffee I'll make using your blood as water."

Charlie laughs and starts to trot toward the payphone.

Mickey smiles. It's always nice to have someone to be yourself around. Charlie's a killer, and he's a killer, and they can be killers together, no problem, and talk about all the bloody fun killers have and let loose every sick thought and fantasy to cross their minds. It always felt like Mickey had to hide himself, when he was alive, just for his own safety, so he didn't end up in a mental hospital or prison. That's why he retreated to a serial killer website when he was in college. He wanted to feel like himself, hidden under the cloak of the anonymity the Internet brought to him like a gift. It was only when he found Debbie, who was looking for someone like him, entirely through chance, that he revealed himself as who he was.

But that didn't go so well. And even around the others, he doesn't feel like he can open up. But Charlie? Wow. Mickey finds it a shame that they have such an age difference. They could have blown up the whole world together if they were alive at the same time with a chance to meet, if Mickey met him instead of Debbie on that forum.

Now, them blowing up the whole world is entirely plausible.

And Mickey, as dissatisfied as he gets, is grateful.

He slides up the wall and rises to his feet. Then he starts after Charlie, who's already putting the coins into the slot. When Charlie spots Mickey coming over, he smiles. There's some kind of a bond that forms when you did the same bad things, and there's another one, a stronger one, that forms when you do them together.

Mickey wonders what Charlie's eyes looked like when he was alive. He bets they were beautiful.

"Hey, Mickey, you know this _is_  my battle to fight," Charlie says. "You can come if you really want, but... I don't plan to kill her. I don't want to hurt anyone yet, not until I know that I can get back. The last thing I want is to be arrested while dead. How would that even work?"

Mickey laughs and grabs for his free hand.

"Normally, I would want to slice Kirby's throat open, strip naked, and bathe in the blood as it squirts all nice and warm on my bare body, but I guess I'll make an exception just this once," he says. "I'm coming, though. I don't leave you behind. We never leave a Ghostface behind."

Charlie stops, thinking.

"Unless you're Jill. Or Debbie...."

"Way to bring our vicious horrible traumas into my attempt to be sappy."

"Okay, okay," says Charlie. "Let's just see if this works."

He dials in the number carefully, pausing as he recalls each number in his mind, and Mickey can see that his fingers are shaking. It must be scary, being out in broad daylight after so long. It is to Mickey. Or, maybe it's about contacting her. There is quite a lot of suspense in this. Once he hits that button to send the call in, anything could happen. She could pick up. Someone else could pick up. The number could be out of service. She could mistake him for a telemarketer and pick up the phone only to immediately hang up, or just refuse to pick it up entirely. She could miss the phone because she's working or taking a nap. Or she could be dead.

Probably dead, Mickey figures. One can really underestimate the fatal nature of a good abdominal wound, especially someone as clueless as Charlie can be. They both know there's a liver and multiple large, vital arteries right there, but Charlie, as quiet as he is, can often get a little too cocky.

Mickey's observation is correct; Charlie's fingertips are shaking so badly that he almost misses when he goes to punch the call in.

But Charlie presses down the last button. No turning back. Before he can even begin to compose himself, he lifts the handset to his ear, and there starts the process of the ringing that haunts his very soul.

One ring. It is an empty, hollow sound. Mickey's gut tenses.

Two rings.

Three rings.

Four rings. Charlie wonders if she's dead, and, quietly, he thinks that she might be. Another part of thinks she's just busy. He didn't stab her deep enough to puncture anything but her love for him.

"Hello?"

She picked up. Charlie has no clue what to say.

Mickey hits him on the shoulder, as if to remind him of something. Charlie gets an idea, one that thrills him deeply.

"What's your favorite scary movie, Kirby?"

Charlie and Mickey both can almost hear the horror in Kirby's very soul.

"No," she whispers. "You don't... Charlie... you're _dead_. They buried you. I stood in front of your _grave._ "

Charlie just feels grateful that he can hear her voice again. He wanted her alive. He succeeded, even if he died in the process. Kirby is okay. Jill didn't win.

He'll never let Jill win.

"Yeah, I'm dead. But do any of the horror greats really stay dead? Even Billy Loomis came back for one last scare at the end, you know..."

He might have loved her, a time so long ago. But he's grown bitter and cruel from his years in the forest, and he no longer cares for her. He finds it more fun to fuck with her mind.

Mickey leans in a little closer. He wants to hear her reaction better.

"No," Kirby says. "You're some sad morbidly obese nerd in his mother's basement who saw Jill's snuff film when he took his daily ten-minute break from _World of Warcraft_  and now wants to fuck with me. I'm not... going t-to let you use this for the media, Charlie! Or... who... whoever you are!"

As strong as her words are, her tone gives her away; she's hyperventilating and choking on something by the end, and Charlie can tell that he made her cry.

He almost feels bad.

And he knows that he must be corrupted, because, he's sure that in life, he would have hated himself if he ever made her cry. But he doesn't want to do anything about it, and he doesn't care.

She hangs up.

Mickey has heard the entire thing, and he's almost impressed with her strength. Charlie did say that her wardrobe of choice included at least six leather jackets, and that she practically oozed defiance, like she was made out of the stuff. He told Mickey once that he didn't kill her because he wanted to see her thrive afterward, like he knew she would, even if it cost them Jill's plan.

But she also, simultaneously, does not sound like she's thriving.

What was all the sobbing at the end, if she's so strong?

When Charlie turns around, Mickey gives him a look.

"So," he says. "I take it we're going to go torment her now. It was a good start."

Charlie's gaze stiffens.

"I guess," he says.

And Mickey has no clue what's going through his mind.

"So, Roman said we had to focus on the place we want to go," Charlie says. "And sort of picture ourselves there, and really get into it. Let's do that."

Mickey nods.

Charlie doesn't know what to picture. It's not like he knows what Kirby's house looks like; she's twenty-five and famous, judging by what she said about the media, so she's probably left her parents, eliminating his only idea of what her house was. But he shuts his eyes and pictures a place, anyway, even though it's really more like a blur, and he pictures himself in it, and he thinks about nothing but that. He is there, in that house, standing with his arms out, and he can feel the ground beneath his feet, and everything is as it should be.

He opens his eyes. He's in an unfamiliar house, and Mickey is pressed against his side, warm and tall and comforting.

_Wow, Mickey, you weren't doing it right at all, but Charlie's desire to take you with him was so strong that it brought you. One, I... didn't even know that was possible. I figured you'd be standing out on the sidewalk like an idiot while Charlie did all the fun stuff. Two, Charlie was playing the tough act and trying to get you to sit around and let him do it, but he wanted you to go anyway, so much that it literally bent everything I thought about that ability. Your friendship is adorable and it makes my cold, dead heart warm. It's like watching a romantic comedy_.

"Get out of my _head_ , man!" Mickey hisses, low enough that Charlie can barely hear it, and he knows why.

This house is where Kirby is, somewhere inside, and Mickey knows it. Charlie can hear her footsteps in a distant room. He shuts his eyes and imagines being behind her. He appears in a bedroom.

She still has the same haircut she had in high school.

"How's this for making a move, Kirby?"

She whirls around, terror blazing in her eyes. The whole world goes still as they take each other in for the first time in years. Charlie can practically feel the pain that runs through her, the memories and the confusion and the triggered fear born into existence by what he did to her. He's satisfied by that. His bitterness makes him find entertainment in her pain, something he thought he never would enjoy, given that he has nearly brought to tears by stabbing her—he still remembers the warbling in his rough voice when he struggled not to sob as he talked her down onto the ground, knife still buried near her navel in a mess of blood.

Mickey, however, standing up against the wall directly behind Charlie, feels like a third wheel, and he has no clue what Kirby's thinking except that she's terrified and probably reliving the night Charlie betrayed her. Mickey pays close attention, though. He has great interest in how Charlie will handle this, knowing that the Father is watching him. He wonders if Charlie will kill her right here, even though he knows that, after what Charlie's said about her, it's very unlikely.

Charlie folds his arms; he feels the big smile as it rises over his lips. He hopes he's unnerving her. If she isn't unnerved, then he'll have to kill her if he wants to impress the Father. But he knows she is. She looks like she's about to have a mental breakdown.

" _Charlie_..."

"Hi, that's me," Charlie says. "You know, you never answered my question. What's your favorite scary movie?"

"The one I lived through," Kirby snaps, without delay, but Charlie can see the tears glistening in her eyes. "All thanks to you..."

Charlie shrugs. He didn't expect this level of venom. It seemed to him that Kirby loved him until he put her down.

"It was thanks to Jill, too, you know. I was just the accomplice, as much as I regret that being the case."

"And then you tried to frame it on Trevor. Who the hell do you think you are?"

Charlie shrugs again. He wasn't prepared for an actual dialogue. He expected her to scream and him to stab her in the belly again, with... something, he supposes—

And Mickey wonders when Charlie got so talkative. Kirby seems to bring something out in him; no wonder he felt like a better person around her.

But that's over now. This is his chance to prove just how loyal he is.

"I left you alive," Charlie says. "I could have killed you if I wanted to."

"Who cares?! You killed your best friend! You killed Olivia! You killed everyone else!"

Kirby's taking a stance like she's about to fight him—Mickey notices her shrinking back, trying to open a space between them, and he notices that her legs are spread apart at just the point to give her optimal balance, and her hands have made fists that are at her chest.

Charlie lowers his head, and Mickey wonders if he's feeling some sort of shame.

Charlie is.

Part of him never intended for things to turn out this way. The rest of him hates Kirby, hates Robbie and Olivia and Trevor and all their other victims, but that one little part of him is significant enough that he feels some kind of emotion. Some kind of shame.

But he can't change the past, so he doesn't want to feel any sort of desire to.

"They deserved to die," Charlie growls, even though he doesn't really think that, and he's never thought that; it's an attempt to break Kirby down. He takes a step to close the space between them, intimidate her. "It was all for Jill."

"No," she says. "It was all for your crazy _Stab_ fantasy. It was never about Jill. It was always about _you_."

"You'll understand someday. Or not... we're going to do what I had too much respect for you to do eight years ago, and even though I rule your mind, I have no power to stop them."

Kirby's gaze pricks with anxiety. She leans back a little more, fists still up at her chest.

"...Who?"

Charlie visualizes being on the other side of the room, away from Mickey. When he reappears there, his abscence reveals Mickey to Kirby.

"'Sup, girl," Mickey says, looking right at her. He punctuates it with an unhinged chuckle, just for dramatic effect.

"That's Mickey fucking Altieri," Kirby says, the tears that glisten in her eyes seeming to stop there, out of shock. "This can't be real."

There's a pause, swollen pregnant with tension.

"Too real," Charlie says, before Mickey can respond, and, while, normally, Mickey would be offended at him taking over, he considers this Charlie's fight—he has no emotional investment here, not the way Charlie does. "You'll die right where we want you to die, and not a moment before or after. We have more power than you could ever believe."

He tilts his head toward Mickey; their eyes lock together in an restatement of trust, and Mickey feels something shift deep in his throat, feels his heart beat a little faster, when those eyes come upon his. What's _wrong_  with him today? He's supposed to be strong, never affected, _terrifying_. It's practically his day job, now that he's dead and he doesn't have to concern himself with the niceties of day-to-day life as a non-psycho, so he should be more than acquainted with it by now. But here he is, feeling things like a fifteen-year-old around their crush would, and he cannot figure out why.

"Let's go, Mickey," Charlie says. "I'd say our business is finished here."

Mickey gives him a nod that he thinks will close the conversation, but Charlie glares back at Kirby with venom in his black eyes, ready to say something more.

"For now. Keep your eyes open; keep looking behind you. Because, on a day very soon, we'll come for you, and then, you'll be dead, and I won't be able to protect you like I did when we were seventeen."

Then Charlie disappears.

Mickey shuts his eyes and disappears after him.


	7. Robbie - Don't You Know Who I Think I Am

Before Robbie leaves, he shaves his beard.

He doesn't want it, for more reasons than one. For starters, he's not sure if Charlie will recognize him when they first meet, if his appearance has changed too drastically. Robbie can't do anything about his long, curly hair without making himself look like a patchy-haired idiot, but he can get rid of the beard. He can do as much as that.

But that's not the main reason or close to the most important one.

He doesn't want it anymore because it's a mark of his past existence, the time where Charlie was innocent and Robbie might never get to see him again. Now that Trevor's revealed that both of those statements are false, it seems odd to keep such a definitive symbol of his depression. Soon, he'll be cured, and this will all be behind him; why continue to look like he's still there, broken?

So he goes in the bathroom first, leaving Trevor to stand by the door, waiting. Once Robbie's inside, he guides his fingers to one of the razors on the counter that hasn't been touched in the better part of months, and he shaves it all off. And when he's does, it's like there's a different person staring at him in the mirror, glowing blue eyes blank of emotion but more obvious than ever on a sleeker, cleaner frame.

He stands there, for a moment, watching himself breathe. It's freeing. The reflection is not identical to the one he saw during his life; he doesn't look any older, but he looks more pallid, like he's been told horrible news and the color has run out of his face, and his hair, thicker, longer, swoops past his ears and down a few inches above his shoulders, a fair bit shorter than Charlie's but longer than Robbie's ever seen his own hair. For a moment, despite all the differences, he feels seventeen and alive again, and he's brought back to a time when his biggest worries were high school drama, a gay crush, and dwindling web traffic. Those days ended long ago, the moment that knife pierced his flesh, but he'd give anything to be back there, where he was, and when he feels like it's happening again, some sense of calm, one absent in him for a very long time, unfurls inside him.

Robbie doesn't know what he'll need to take with him, and the only things he comes up with are what he doesn't have—weapons, in case the place Trevor described is dangerous, for one. He doesn't know why Trevor is letting them go unarmed; he hopes they'll stop by somewhere and pick up  _something_  to defend themselves with, whether it be something as complex and harrowing to their enemies as an AR-15 or as simple and easy to underestimate as a heavy branch. Maybe if Trevor said the place was sunshine and rainbows, Robbie would feel differently, but, for now, in these circumstances, fear pricks within him.

Robbie scratches at his hairless cheek as he leaves the bathroom, marvelling at how different the sensation of it against his hand is. It's smoother than he expected it to be, for someone who is out of practice at shaving just out of his own lack of motivation. Seeing Charlie again will probably do wonders for his motivation, too, if just the concept of it can get him to break something like this; the thought of all the things he'll do once he's seen Charlie again flashes through his head, and he's so ready that it almost scares him.

"Well, that wasn't what I had in mind by getting stuff, but no harm, no foul; it was probably for the best you did that."

Trevor's grinning at Robbie from across the room, and Robbie feels like the only one of them to notice the irony of smiling like that in such dark and depressing surroundings, surroundings that Robbie can barely see in and surroundings that engulf them both in the smell of rot and garbage and pure human suffering, which has a smell, to Robbie.

He smelled something, when he died. He collapsed on Kirby's porch, his flowing blood hot in his mouth, and he waited for God to come. God never did. But while he was lying there, bleeding, eyes turned toward the bushes in the distance, a scent wafted through his senses, and he couldn't ignore it, even as he was trying to grapple the fact that it was the end for him. It was strong, vaguely sweet, but so, so heady that it nearly made him pass out, though that effect could have just been the blood loss.

He had no choice but to lie there, listless, limp, and take it in, and once he was dead, he thought that, perhaps, it was something he hallucinated in his final moments, his brain so starved of oxygen and the blood that was gushing out of his too-deep wounds that it convulsed in his skull and made up something that was never truly there.

But as the years went by, Robbie smelled it again, right in his own home, and he knew what it was.

Suffering.

Suffering in that he was going to lose everything, and, then, suffering in that he had lost everything. He's suffered so long now that he's become very acquainted with all of what suffering feels like, and all of the things that come alongside it.

"I figured he wouldn't recognize me," Robbie says as he wades toward the table, not wanting to get into it all with Trevor, because Trevor is not the easiest person to open up to, and though Robbie wants to link that to all the scummy, desperate things he did while he was alive, things that should have made him hard to trust, Robbie can't really shake the thought that it isn't Trevor who's making him too nervous to share, but him himself, his own hesitation for his own reasons.

"You look better without it," Trevor says. "You already own a trash kingdom. Looking like a hobo on top of that makes the vibe too strong, fam."

"Fam?"

"Some kid drove his car into a tree last month... I heard him say it. It's apparently  _very_  hip with the youngsters. It means you're my dude, fam."

As much as he wants to tell Trevor that they aren't and will never be as close as Trevor thinks they are, Robbie doesn't have the heart.

"2010 slang was better."

He reaches the table, kicking over a plastic bottle in the process. There's the drawing; he creases it through the center, and then folds it again, so it's a little smaller. He slides it into the pocket of his jeans.

"I'm ready," he says, looking up at Trevor.

Trevor gives him a nod and turns toward the door, oddly graceful despite the layer of garbage cloaking his feet. Robbie follows him, and, surprisingly, for the first time in a while, he makes it through without the urge to trip clawing at him.

Trevor opens the door for him, and Robbie is hit with a burst of brightness from the outside, as well as a rush of warmth. The heat carried on the breeze strikes him more, despite how dark his house was; it must have been freezing inside, too.

Robbie hasn't seen the outside of his house, or out into the street, in a few weeks. He rarely steps out, anymore, something strange, for someone who was always so extroverted and social. But he feels a little better, now that he's outside and in the warmth, and he has Trevor to thank. Not that Robbie should know, but every day is between sixty and seventy degrees and sunny once you're dead.

They start down the sidewalk, down the empty streets, past the little wooden notice board with the tattered papers informing residents of the neighborhood of mundanities like garage sales and the  _new_  trash pick-up policy, if last January can still be considered new. Robbie likes to walk past it when he does go out, though he doesn't necessarily look; it proves the afterlife, or, at least, his section of it, because he knows the other neighborhoods have different time periods and cultures, is just the standard American small town, just like he grew up in.

"Hey, Mercer?"

Some of Robbie's friends, Olivia, Charlie, Jill, Kirby, used to like to call him that; part of Robbie wonders if that is why Trevor did it, because he knew it'd bring him back to the time before the massacre shattered them all into jagged fragments too small to put back together, like a ceramic vase knocked off a pedestal. And for a moment, Robbie is back in high school, carefree, hopeful, wondering what his future might be and totally unaware that it would be robbed from him and he would stay seventeen as long as he existed because that was when he was happiest.

"Yeah?"

"You mind if I swing by and check in with Olivia before we go? This might take a while, so she'll want to know where I've gone," Trevor says. "I guess that's sort of a pro to living alone, huh? You can just walk off wherever you please at any time and no one cares."

Robbie takes a deep breath, one he hopes Trevor won't misconstrue as frustration or annoyance, because it's technically more of a selfish move. The more time Robbie has to wait before he can see Charlie again, the more obsessive he's going to get.

"Except you," Robbie says, rolling his eyes. "But, yeah, no problem."

And Trevor keeps smiling at him, so Robbie figures his mild dismay at having to make a pit stop so early on wasn't noticed, and, if it was, Trevor really didn't care.

Robbie figures that, eight years ago, Trevor would have bit his head off for even insinuating that he was annoyed. The only person he was ever really this soft and gentle around was Jill, which, Robbie realizes, rhymes with the word  _kill_ and that should have been a massive red flag in the first place. But when they died, their bodies were the only thing that didn't continue to mature, and now, Robbie, as much as he doesn't want Trevor around, is happy to say that Trevor is much nicer and more level than he's ever been.

In fact, he almost behaves like Charlie, even if there's no spark between them like Robbie and Charlie had with each other. Trevor is calm, cool, much louder than Charlie ever was but always just as comfortable to be around. Robbie supposes that if he had to be stuck with anyone refusing to give up on him, and it couldn't be Charlie, then he'd want it to be Trevor.

He just feels like he never asked for the help.

"She'll be glad to see you, you know," Trevor says, a twinkle in his eye and his smile curling up a little further at the corner of his mouth. "She wasn't that into you when she was alive, but now we're all mature adults, and she tells me that she worries about you sometimes."

"She... does? I know I'm a lot to worry about, but  _Olivia Morris_  worries about me?"

"I said  _sometimes_. As in, some of the time. She's still herself, trust me. It's what I like about her. And herself isn't really inclined to worry about you too often."

"Personal question, and it's fine if you don't answer—"

"That's the first time I've ever heard that come out of your mouth, Mr.  _Hall Pass_. But carry on."

"Were you into her when you were alive?"

Trevor somehow freezes up while walking, and Robbie has no clue how he did it.

"No," he says. "I thought she was a bitch. But death changes you, you know? Knowing it's all over and you're stuck with these people until your soul fades into dust in a couple thousand years can really snuff that sort of shit out. I'm not a jerk anymore, for example. And, for a couple years there, I'm pretty sure I was. But dying makes me, like, aware of all the shit I did."

Robbie nods and they continue walking in silence, something Trevor rarely allows Robbie to have, when they're together; Robbie figures it is because Trevor is secretly evil and hates it when Robbie feels comfortable, even though it's probably actually because Trevor assumes Robbie gets enough silence, being alone and hopeless whenever he's left to his own devices.

The houses seem to close in on them on either side; Robbie feels a little claustrophobic underneath the pink sky, even without any tree cover to make it seem like something's creeping up behind him in the darkness. By the time they reach where Trevor and Olivia live, Robbie is more than happy to be getting away from his surroundings, the surroundings that should do anything but put him into a state of severe panic and paranoia.

The lawn in front of them is immaculately manicured, not a blade out of sync with the others, nothing crooked or too long or too short, and it's a vibrant green that puts Robbie's bright spearmint  _Stab_  shirt to shame. The rose bushes out in front, along the porch, are equally as perfect; they're dark and flawless and dotted with crimson roses, always caught in bloom. Trees are fairly rare, but there's one near the sidewalk, a huge oak that towers over the both of them and even over the roof of the house, branches spread like great arms over the street, fuzzy with leaves that part the paleness of the sky.

It occurs to Robbie that Trevor got everything he didn't get; perhaps that contributes to Trevor's consistently good spirits.

Trevor puts a hand on Robbie's shoulder, and he's warm and gentle enough that Robbie does not mind.

"Reminds you of home, doesn't it?"

Robbie nods softly, even though it was something he didn't think of until it was brought up. It does remind him of Woodsboro, just a little bit. It really does. The neatness, the comfort, the perfection. It was something that he always had when he was alive, something he was always surrounded with.

He feels a little nostalgic.

"Yeah. It does."

"It kind of hurts, those days never coming back. But, hey, whatever. These ones are pretty damn good, too," Trevor says. "And I'm sorry you can't feel that way."

It seems less passive-aggressive than it sounds on the surface, but Robbie still doesn't like that he cannot quite agree.

"I'm not upset anymore," Robbie says. "I just want to see Charlie."

"I don't understand you, Robbie."

"I don't understand you either."

They walk up to the porch like that, up the stairs and to the door. Trevor fishes in his pocket for a moment, hand wiggling beneath the fabric. Then he finds his key and lets them in.

Olivia is sitting on the couch, staring down into a book. When she hears Trevor swing the door open, her head shoots up. The last time Robbie saw Olivia while he was alive, she was slumped on a stretcher, beneath a sheet stained with her blood, and being rolled out of an ambulance. She was deader than any dead thing he'd ever seen before, and he couldn't even begin to imagine what her injuries looked like, that she managed to bleed like that even after her heart stopped. It must have been so violent that it was like hanging a deer carcass off a tree branch to drain out, even just lying down, out and gone. And though Robbie's seen her since then, he never fails to be amazed at how much better she looks compared between then and now. The only thing that keeps her from looking as if she's been frozen in her former state as a beauty queen and future model is the glowing from her wounds and eyes, giving away that she's dead. And, the most intriguing, strangely beautiful thing is that she's got a big light in one of her hands that makes her look like she's holding the sun, and, with the book in her hands, the light leaks right through it. Robbie isn't attracted to her, no matter how much he pretended to be when he was younger and dumber and less in touch with himself, but he can appreciate how much more beautiful death made her, when she was already pretty enough to be the school's pearl before.

He can also appreciate just how lucky Trevor got, to not only have this beautiful girl but have her after Jill turned her against him. Olivia must have noticed how less scratchy he's become and managed to cultivate some sort of attraction to him.

Robbie doesn't like to think about that, though, because he's then left to wonder what their sex life is like, with the bullet hole sitting in Trevor's dick. He feels himself suppressing a smile; he lets it come into existence with a blazing fire, but he's not sure if it's because he's happy to be here or because that thought he just had amused him a lot.

Olivia sets her book on the coffee table and rises to her feet. She takes a few shaky steps over to Trevor, like she's been sitting too long—he figures that she probably has been. With a practically infinite amount of years at her disposal, she probably reads a lot, given that there's nothing better to do except fuck Trevor all day, and he's headed out for a while. She wraps her arms around him and presses her head into his chest. When she pulls away, a big, dorky grin, one Robbie has never been able to picture Olivia with until he saw it for himself, creeps across her face.

"I missed you," she says, peering up at him with big, innocent eyes. Then her gaze meets Robbie, and she pulls away from Trevor's touch.

"You brought Cinema Boy?" she asks flatly, with the only emphasis on the bit of annoyance rising in her as she calls the name she's made for Robbie.

Trevor shoots Robbie a glance, as if to tell him that it's all an act, like he said earlier, but Robbie can't believe that it really is. It'd be so much like Trevor to lie to make him feel better—once he gets his mind on something, he'll do anything to achieve it. That's why Jill hated him so much, because he couldn't stop. He didn't know  _when_  to stop.

And Robbie thinks that, as much as he's started to move from boiling to lukewarm, Trevor is a little less innocent than he puts off.

"Yeah," Trevor says. "We're about to go on a little excursion. Guy thing."

Olivia rolls her eyes.

"Oh, don't tell me you're leaving. What is this  _really_  about? Because something tells me it's not a  _guy thing_."

Trevor ushers Olivia away, into the corner of the room, next to the bookshelf. It's like a nook for them to hide in, and when Trevor whispers to her, Robbie can't make out at all what they're saying; he can only hear the frantic, panicked nature of their voices, and the uncertain fear trembling in her words as Olivia speaks. That fear turns to anger, eventually, and Robbie has no guess at what is being discussed.

It's about thirty seconds later when they turn back to reality, and Robbie feels a little bulge in his chest. He realizes that it's his heart, thumping away so hard against his sternum that it felt to be completely foreign. He must be nervous. He takes a breath—he's  _certain_  he's nervous.

"So," Olivia says, blinking. "Trevor told you about Charlie."

Robbie nods, too stiff to do much good at it.

"And you still want to see him?"

Robbie nods again.

"So Cinema Boy is masochistic. Or he has a death wish. A...  _second death_  wish. You gotta calm down, Mercer. Think things through. Deep breaths; get your brain some oxygen..."

Trevor puts a hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah, I think he's insane, too. But if that's what he really wants, we have no right to stop him."

Olivia groans and pulls up her shirt. It's like staring into the sun; there's a big opening that sort of glows together as one. Robbie figures that she was gutted. It would explain how bright and how large the wound is. Charlie probably pulled her guts right out of her flayed, slashed abdomen while she screamed for the help that would never come.

Robbie still wants to see him.

It would hurt less to die at his hand than it would to live without him.

"May I remind the both of you what Charlie did to me?" Olivia asks, glaring down at her wounds. "And you're just gonna forget that and go visit him like he's Grandma in the nursing home?"

Robbie shrugs, and Olivia pulls her shirt back down.

"He might've killed me, too," he says. "I still can't handle not having him."

"He's clearly going insane, Trevor. Go get him help."

Before Trevor can reply, Robbie leaps up, metaphorically, to defend himself.

"I'm not insane. I just feel like I might be able to save him."

"He stabbed me through the  _hand_  and then gutted me while Kirby watched. That isn't worth trying to save, Robbie! You can't fix him!"

Her voice is rising in volume, in intensity, and Robbie is relieved when Trevor steps in. Robbie feels a weight fall off of his shoulders.

"You two sound like an old married couple," Trevor grunts. His gaze meets Olivia's. "I'm taking him to the forest and there's nothing you can do about it."

Olivia seems troubled by this. Her lips sag into a frown, and her eyes brim with hurt. But she faces Trevor and puts a hand on his cheek in a warm, gentle embrace.

"Okay," she says. "But promise me you won't go in."

Trevor smiles.

"I won't. I'll take him to it. I can't promise you that he'll come back, but  _I'll_  come back in one piece," he says. "Trust me."

"Like Jill trusted you," Olivia says.

They both laugh, and then, they kiss, a little harder than Robbie would expect them to do when they aren't alone.

They have a weird sense of humor.


	8. Charlie and Mickey - Pray (put em in the dirt)

"No, we don't have any proof we found her, but the Father was in our heads the whole time, so you know we did it. Besides, this is how the movies start. After that kickass opening scene, you want to build that tension, so you go slow and gentle. Like you're making love," Mickey says, head high, like he believes every word he's saying, and Charlie knows that he does.

Charlie's gaze flicks over the others, gauging their reactions. He and Mickey arrived back here, in the light of the portal, a few minutes ago, and, since then, they've been swarmed with a constant flow of questions and comments, mostly questions but with the few comments they got being very impactful ones—the first words out of Jill's mouth were that she was surprised they made it back at all, and the second words out of her mouth were that she didn't believe they actually went out and found anyone. Stu wasn't much better—if candy were bad puns, he'd be a chocolate fountain. Not really his fault, though.

It was the Son who asked who they found, and, then, if they had any proof they'd found her. Mickey took over for Charlie, and Charlie was more than appreciative of it.

Mickey, however, is troubled by the lack of trust. But he doesn't care. He's never cared. All that matters to him is power and winning back what he lost. His plan was semi-successful, because he did become infamous, if Charlie knowing about him was a good enough source to judge, but at what cost? There was no trial, no media firestorm. Sidney destroyed that for him. All he wants to do is see her dead.

And maybe get some more respect, but the respect is wholly optional.

The Son stands in the center of them all; the Father is absent. Billy nods his head a little, bobbing it like he's hearing a mellow pop song, as a smile crosses his face.

"The Father says you've done some good work," he says. "He didn't expect gore out of you two, anyway. And I say save that for the people who know what they're doing."

"What, do you think we _can't_  kill?" Mickey asks.

Charlie grits his teeth. How dare he even begin to imply that he and Mickey aren't as worthy to be labeled killers as everyone else. He pulled off one of the most brutal kills, all on his own—he remembers distinctly the glint of Olivia's intestines in the light of her room after he slashed her open with hacking motions of his knife and used his hands to tear them out of her abdomen like lengths of slippery rope—and it seems like no one appreciates that. Mickey, as well, was pretty fucking brutal. They deserve just as much respect as anyone else, and Charlie is only more baffled than ever by the mistreatment. Stu was an accomplice, but no one bullies him.

And perhaps if Charlie knew what would have happened if he went along with Jill's plan, he would have kept his hormones and his _Stab_  obsession in check long enough to say no, hold her down, and call the police. But he was young and dumb and unaware that there was an afterlife just for them, and doubly unaware that he'd have to exist alongside the person who killed him every day for the rest of his existence.

He wonders if Mickey shares the same regretful sentiment, and judging by the questioning of the Son, Mickey does.

He does. Mickey shares it a million times over.

"No," Billy says. "But you can't deny you two have gone soft. It's why we never assigned you to help us with the portal."

" _Soft_?" Mickey's voice warbles with disbelief, and he can feel his heart clenching in his chest, tight with rage. "We're not _soft_ , need you forget what Jill and Charlie said that he did to the Olivia girl."

"That was forever ago. How long has it been since they popped up here? A long time."

"A long time," Debbie echoes, taking a step forward as if to close the space between them. "Now, you quit arguing with my son, Mickey. You know he's right."

Charlie folds his arms; he recoils a little at the pain that shoots through his chest and gut when he does. Even after years and years, he always forgets about the stab wounds and the fact that they don't and won't ever heal, that he's bound to walk with them forever. He can't even imagine how Jill feels—she got out way worse than him, with self-inflicted injuries including a stab wound, a red, scratched eye that was gouged nearly out of the socket and just plain _looks_ painful, electrocution burns on either side of her head, and a gunshot through the chest. He hopes she's in constant agony, after what she did to break his heart, literally and metaphorically.

He glances up at Billy.

"You're only saying that because you hate us," Charlie says. "Why? I don't know. We did just as much as you did."

Billy shrugs his shoulders.

"We're still _proud_  of you," Billy says, in a light, chirpy tone, but it's clear he doesn't mean a word, because he rolls his eyes and manages, somehow, to scoff with them, too. "Just feel honored that the Father wanted us to put such an important job up to you."

"You thought we were going to die, and that's the only reason you sent us there."

"Don't blame me. Blame the Father. He makes all the big decisions. He's a director, after all. You should know better than anyone what that means, Mr. Me and My Boyfriend Run Cinema Club."

There's a snip in Billy's voice that Charlie can't take—Mickey senses it first, what Charlie's going to do. And, oh God, he prays that Charlie won't do it.

But there's another part of Mickey that wants to see what will unfold if Charlie does the opposite of what will help them.

Charlie meets Billy's gaze, stern, solid. 

"Most films that can be considered biopics, _Stab_ included, glorify their subjects..."

Charlie's eyes glint with a smug sort of pride, but he and Mickey both know, deeper than anything, that he just made a grave mistake.

Billy lunges forward, grabs Charlie by the throat, and lifts him straight off the ground. Mickey's heart explodes in his chest, picking up speed that thunders beneath his sternum but less gradually and more all at once; he scrambles back so fast that he nearly spills onto the floor, pulse aching in his body.

"Now you'll learn not to talk back to me," Billy hisses, black eyes slits of hatred. "Snuff films like the shit you made aren't real movies anyway. They're for people just as fucked up as me but twice as pathetic..."

His grip tightens, clenching into Charlie's neck; Charlie lets out a high, warbling screech of terror with the last of his air, a terrible survival method more likely fueled by panic rather than by any actual skillset.

Mickey, hunched a few feet away with anger tightened like a fist in his very soul, wants to fight back and wants to save the forever-boy paralyzed with fear in front of him. He's been such a good ally. Mickey spent his whole life thinking that he was too frozen to feel anything for anyone, and he thinks Charlie might have felt the same way, though his sentiment was more of an acute lack of feeling much rather than an inability to love, given that he never really seems to raise his voice or indicate that he's feeling emotions.

But Mickey, as much as he acknowledges what Charlie's done for him, also likes the chaos, likes the fear in Charlie's eyes, and he can't bring himself to change the circumstance when it's the source of so much amusement in a dull world of overwork and scorn. And he doesn't want to risk ending up in Charlie's position, either, which would most certainly happen if he stood up for him. That would not benefit anyone.

So Mickey stays quiet, the ghost of a smile on his face and his eyes frozen on Billy's hands, and he watches the madness take hold.

Charlie's gaze sweeps the hollow, illuminated by the glow of the portal, and, though he knows no one, not even Mickey, would dare help him, he begs silently for a way out, for Jill or Stu or Debbie to step in and defend him. Charlie can't breathe. He's already dead, but he can't breathe. He never thought that would be a problem he'd have to deal with after he died, but, now, it's all he can think about, because, if he stands here any longer, in Billy's impossibly strong hands, he might die again, and he doesn't know what comes after that. Reincarnation? No consciousness at all? Some worse, more painful form of torture?

"Always so ungrateful, never satisfied, always wanting more, more, more," Billy says, glaring into Charlie's eyes. "I'm sure you'd do anything to go back to what you had before your killings..."

Charlie tries to kick his legs, flail his arms, anything to get the Son to loosen up his grip or drop him entirely, but he's growing weaker, and feebler, with the blood rushing in his ears and his vision blurring, and every movement he makes feels as though he has a bag of dumbbells strapped to his limbs. He jerks, fights, so quickly and violently that he can't even place what limb it is he's moving, but it is hopeless, and after a few more seconds of fruitless struggle, he gives up and resigns himself to his second death.

He looks at Billy for a while, takes in the sick little smirk blossoming over his mouth, stares into cruel eyes gleaming with a speck of amusement. He realizes that, here, in front of him, is his killer, his _second_  killer, the killer who isn't Jill, and he wonders how he got to this point of his existence, being strangled to death by one of his idols and biggest fascinations. But then Charlie lets his eyes roll up and stare blankly ahead at the gnarled branches in the distance, too accepting of his fate to panic any longer or feed Billy any pleasure in his fear or his defiance, and he tries to piece together every action he took that got him a little closer to the end. Surely, accepting Jill's offer, allowing himself to think with his hormones before his brain, did this to him, but there were a lot of little things, too, that must have fueled him to end up here. Everything fed into one another, every insignificant little thing shaped the course of his life, and he feels honored that he ever got to live, no matter the atrocities he committed in that life.

Charlie's throat is throbbing, windpipe compressed into a straight, flat line, and darkness swirls at the edges of his vision. He shuts his eyes, ready to lose consciousness and then die, and, regretting nothing but his longing to be able to regret, he feels himself start to slip away—

_Drop him. He's learned his lesson._

Roman?

The Father saved him?

And, not only that, but the Father actually broadcasted the fact that he was taking the role of defender in this situation to everyone?

Charlie feels the pressure on his neck relieve itself, and, not a second later, he's hit the floor like a parasite, returning persistently no matter how much he stirs and tries to get back up, and his own weakness confines him to where he is as effectively as barbed wire and concrete. He lies there, splayed out on the dirt, his breathing heavy and overbearing but entirely present, and he waits for the drama that he knows will ensue.

"Yes, Father," Billy sighs, seeming fairly innocuous in tone, but there's a hiss trailing in his voice that Charlie knows is venomous, venom that is directed at him and at him alone. Any anger Billy had for Mickey is gone. Now that Billy's been held back from killing him, Charlie's going to be his new punching bag, if he wasn't already the punching bag before.

Mickey takes a deep breath. Charlie might be down, but he's stirring, attempting to rise. He's alive. As much as Mickey wanted to see Charlie die, partially out of morbid curiosity, partially because seeing death pleases him, he can't deny that, once Charlie was gone, he'd resent the feelings he had that kept him from intervening. He'd be all alone out here, and there'd be one less person to distance himself from Debbie with.

Still standing there, eyes flicking between Charlie and Billy, who's turned around, addressing an empty expanse of trees where he must think the Father is, Mickey's not sure whether to rush over and try to help Charlie to his feet or stay back and watch the chaos unfold in a decision fueled by a combination of self-preservation and interest in receiving further amusement. Maybe, if Mickey were lucky, the Father would pop out and grab the Son by the neck, too, and, this time, Billy's neck would snap instantaneously, severing his spinal cord from his brain, and it would kill him.

But he knows that's not what's to happen next. The only hatred the Father has is harbored towards Sidney. Their hatred of Sidney is what brings them all together, unites them with a common need, a shared fire burning inside them all.

And then Mickey realizes why no one likes him and Charlie.

No matter what they've said, no matter what they've claimed, no matter the times they've used hating Sidney as a blanket term to refer to all of them... it was never true.

Charlie didn't hate Sidney at all. If anything, he idolized her. He loved Jill so much that he wanted her to _replace_  Sidney. Why would he have wanted the girl he loved the most to emulate someone he hated?

And Mickey himself? He didn't hate Sidney, and, really, he doesn't now, not even after dying. It was nothing personal. He needed an introduction to the world of murder, and Debbie was willing to give that to him, and it just so happened to be that Sidney was the person that she wanted him to strike down the barriers around and then kill.

Everyone else? They had a reason to hate her. Even Stu, whose reason Mickey figures was something akin to Billy, Stu's primary source of encouragement, hating her.

But not Mickey and not Charlie, and while Mickey doesn't think anyone realizes it consciously, he now knows why they're treated like they're no more than the coarse gray grass beneath their feet, or, at least, he has a speculative hypothesis as to why.

The Father fades into existence in front of Billy, hovering a few inches above the grass. Mickey bows, and as he does, the Father lowers himself until his feet touch ground, probably for the first time since he was alive—Mickey notes the way Debbie, Stu, and Jill all exchange a glance from their bowing positions—in what Mickey thinks is a display of sternness, an attempt to reach Billy's level to better deliver a lecture.

The others call him the Father because he is the sire of the circumstances that put them all here, but Billy calls him the Father because he was like a father when Billy's own did not serve adequately, and nowhere is this more apparent than it is when the Father does things like this.

The Father takes a few steps forward and brushes his hand through Billy's hair.

"I kept watching as long as I could. Almost didn't stop you in time," the Father says. "For a second there, we were about neck and neck."

Mickey thinks he hears Jill groan in protest of the horrible, horrible pun, but Billy says nothing.

The Father continues. "It was a good cinematic buildup. All that tension. And, hey, Mickey?"

Mickey peers up.

"I always wanted to direct a romance... you're every bit of right, about the slow and gentle, and I think it applies there just as much as in horror. You gotta tease it. You foreplay the audience until they forget you have a dick."

Mickey wonders why he brought that up.

Through the corner of Mickey's drifting eyes, he catches a glimpse of Charlie rising to his feet. He stumbles at first, unsure, legs shaky and probably numb after having a hand compressing his jugular and therefore cutting his circulation, but he gains control of his floundering body, and Mickey watches with horror and deranged glee mixed about equally as Charlie does all he's done since they got back from harassing Kirby and makes things harder on himself, this time not by speaking but by wandering off, with his eyes forward and intent on nonverbally telling the Son to go fuck himself for subjecting him to what he subjected Kirby to, so long ago, attempted murder committed by an ally.

The Father clearly sees him, and, if he didn't, Mickey is sure everyone can hear Charlie scuffling through the undergrowth as he stomps away, finally provoked to visible anger—Mickey's noticed that, for all the discontent Charlie feels, all the rage that brews inside, he seldom expresses it. He leaves it all to stew and then implode, firing off and taking him with it.

And that's only what he actually feels. Mickey's convinced that Charlie's under anesthesia in his existence, that he doesn't feel a thing.

The Father's gaze chases Charlie for a moment, but, then, it's right back on Mickey.

"His role hasn't been cut, and that's why I saved him," the Father says. "If you want to go chase him down, Mickey, you know this forest better than anyone. If not... we'll let him go. He'll come back to us at any rate; I can't read the future, but I can read _him_..."

The Father takes a few steps forward, and Mickey notices how shaky he is, how unsure, just as unsure as Charlie. But while Charlie was injured, and possibly delirious from the lack of oxygen to his brain, Roman is just out of practice. He peers down at Mickey and asks a question.

"Can you read him as well as I do?"

Mickey nods solemnly, again to seek his own self-preservation. The Father's already in his head. Why tell him through emotion anything he doesn't need to know if he's going to find out anyway? Not that there's anything to hide...

"I figured," the Father says with a smile, before turning around and rising back into his usual hovering position. He floats back over to Billy and starts to ask him something, but Mickey isn't listening.

He can't stop staring at the patch of scuffed, scattered dirt where Charlie was, and, though it's not a matter of guilt or a dirty conscience, he can't stop wondering if the decisions they made to get here were really the right ones to make.


	9. Robbie - Numb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chobbie master race represent, bitches

Robbie can't believe his eyes.

He has to come to a stop where he is, cuing Trevor to quit walking next to him, so that they can take in what's in front of them, because Robbie didn't know that this is what the beyond looked like and he isn't sure he could ever have been ready for the beauty of it. Around them, the houses have slowly sloped to a stop, giving way to a hill set over a sea of pink and gold grasses and bright flowers, illuminated with the glow of lights that cut through the transparent rose mist hovering over the ground. Trees are scattered loosely over the plain beneath, each covered in glimmering white blossoms that illuminate the air and drift in the breeze that carries the scent of rain and fruit.

Robbie has no choice but to stare down, but to look, but to stop and breathe and take it all in. There hasn't been anything this beautiful in his existence since he was still breathing Earth's air. Just for a moment, though it means nothing at all, it almost breaks through the hurt that still smoulders inside him like the lit end of a cigarette. He looks over at Trevor, just to gauge if he knew this would be so great. If this is where Charlie is, then Trevor was surely joking when he said it wasn't a good place to be.

"Hey, I told you it wouldn't take more than a few hours to get out here," Trevor says.

Things come together in Robbie's mind.

"It's beautiful... and that means this isn't where he is, then."

"Nope." Trevor shrugs. "After this."

"...After this?"

"This area shapes to your needs. We want to get beyond it, so it takes our group consensus into mind, and it won't take us more than a day to cross to get to what's beyond it. If we wanted to build on it, it'd go on forever... like your hoard, Robbie Raccoon."

Robbie blinks, less offended at Trevor's admittedly spot-on comparison of him to a trash panda who's hypnotized enough by the shimmer to grab anything shiny, and more confused by the sudden drop of information he wasn't aware about after almost a decade here, but he's a fair bit of both emotions anyway.

"How do you know all this?" Robbie asks, because he genuinely wants to know.

"Jenny Randall," he says.

"Of course," Robbie replies without missing a beat, remembering the scandal that had erupted shortly before they both died, about Trevor secretly dating Jenny behind Jill's back. Of course they still got together, because maybe Olivia wasn't possessive enough to mind. "And how does she know?"

"Marnie."

"And her?"

"In her nature to look for answers from people who have been here longer until she figures it out, I guess. Do I look like an encyclopedia to you?"

"You're shaped like a rectangle that's been drinking protein shakes and deadlifting for the past five years. So, yeah. Thick and square. Encyclopedia."

It's more of a retaliation than Robbie expects something that stupid and that much of a reach to be, and he thinks it might just be the grief talking. He doesn't think he was ever really depressed, if depression was to be considered a medical condition like an injury or a wound or a disease like diabetes or cancer that would be cured upon death, but he was certainly in a consistent state of grief, of mourning, one that never seemed to leave him, and even with the good news he's been served swiping the weight right off his back, he can't seem to shake, after so long, the shadow of pain that has followed him since he took his last breath.

But Trevor doesn't fight back against Robbie, like he would have so many years ago. Before he died and learned that humility and patience would better serve him than selective and patchy loyalty, Robbie's sure that Trevor would have ripped anyone's head clean off with his teeth for making a terrible stumbling half-joke like that, with no pardon for Robbie, who seems to drift between being deathly quiet and not being able to keep his mouth shut. But with just how out of his way Trevor went to prove that he cared, that he wasn't the person he always was, Robbie wonders why he ever started to doubt anything.

Trevor smirks, and raises his eyebrows, a twinkle chasing in his glowing eyes, and Robbie doesn't sense anything but playfulness.

"You noticed? I thought your type was scrawny, homely twinks, like He Who Watched Too Many Movies," Trevor says.

Robbie holds back what he wants to say, about Trevor's type being everyone with a vagina.

"I can notice the buffet without wanting to take a bite."

"Fair," Trevor says. There's a sudden hitch in his voice, like he just recalled a painful memory. "Okay, one final warning. I've told you enough, I guess, but I have to stress it. This place we're going to is like a sweaty infected armpit boil on a hot chick, and as long as we're still on our side of it all, we can turn back. You could go virtually anywhere else here and have a better time."

Robbie takes a deep breath. He knows he could be trapped. He knows it's going to suck, and he wishes Trevor would stop reiterating it to him. Robbie would live in the worst of conditions for Charlie, because Charlie could make those conditions feel good, make them all worth it.

Even ignoring Robbie's attraction to Charlie, and his love for him, both things that could lighten the load of the stress and pain and all of the bad things that they'll experience wherever Charlie is, Robbie is aware that Charlie always had a gift to persuade him to do almost anything. That was why discussing headcanons and motivations and other subjective information about their favorite films was so much fun. Robbie could walk into the discussion unaware of something, or completely set against it, and, once Charlie explained the other side, Robbie would be pinned and accept the new belief. It was uncanny. All Charlie would have to do would be to tell Robbie one good thing about the place, and Robbie would accept his fate.

Besides, any place would be better than _here_. Robbie can't imagine a more pointless, miserable existence than what he just departed. Anything that isn't that can be considered a serious improvement.

"I know you only say that because you feel responsible for me, but trust me, it may not seem like it, after you having to breathe for me for eight years, but I can make my own decisions and look out for myself," Robbie says. "I might be in the body of a virgin seventeen-year-old who died as the result of a string of idiotic decisions, but I'm not a kid anymore."

Robbie expects Trevor to be taken aback, but all that comes of what was said is a soft smile and a muted, smug disbelief bright in his eyes.

"If you say so."

Trevor smirks, and it's the first time Robbie thinks he recognizes who Trevor used to be.

They start down the sheer side of the hill; it's easier to traverse than Robbie thought it would be, considering the slope and its immense height. But it's steady, despite being steep, with jagged footholds that give him an easy route down, and Robbie's steps are so quick and sure that he feels as though he's drifting over the ground like he's been caught in the wind. Even Trevor, too big to be graceful, has little struggle.

When they reach the bottom, the mottled grass swipes at Robbie's knees, much longer than the grass in the developed areas of this place. He's still stunned by the beauty of what's around him, even now that he's off the hill and no longer has a good view, and he's so stunned, in fact, that he barely notices Trevor open his mouth next to him.

"So... I hate to say it, but you've been a lot less moody since I finally came clean about Charlie. I guess it's just another kick in the ass to tell me that being honest won't kill me."

"You did the right thing," Robbie says. "You were only trying to protect me. You were my Laurie Strode, and I was Tommy Doyle, and you did what you thought was best to keep me unhurt."

"Nice metaphor." Trevor looks up at the sky, and then back at Robbie. "Did you come up with that while you were binge drinking? I know most of that trash wasn't yours, but... you sure had a lot of whiskey bottles."

"I drink the pain away," Robbie says, suddenly recalling his... _habit._  Most of the time, it didn't even occur to him that he drank until he was already finishing the bottle. In fact, he hadn't thought about it in a day or two, at this point, even when he was recollecting on how terrible his existence was. "It's such a habit that I don't even think about it. I mean... I _died_  drinking the pain away. That should tell you something."

"Hoarding, drinking, whatever. I hope Charlie fixes you. That's why I'm doing this despite all Olivia's said to try to convince me that this is a bad idea. I want you to be happy again. You were always this ray of sunshine in the darkest of times, and I want that back, for your sake and mine; I don't want to have to think about the irony in you being the most depressed in the place where people are supposed to lose their addictions and their sadness."

Trevor puts a hand on Robbie's shoulder for a moment before dropping it back down to his side.

"I died because I was selfish and I broke Jill's heart," Trevor says. "I feel responsible, like, if not for me, maybe she never would have lost her mind, and you'd still be alive. Olivia would still be alive. We'd _all_  still be alive. And I have to make that up to you. I have to be better... and being better starts with what I do every day, but it also means doing this."

They walk in silence for a minute or two.

"You're doing me a huge favor, you know. You're doing something good here. Charlie always made me feel better, no matter what," Robbie says, out of the blue, and for no particular reason, only because what Trevor said needed a while to weigh on his mind. "If you want to make up my death to me, taking me to him is probably the best way you could have done that."

"Is that how you know you love someone? That they make you feel better no matter what?"

"I think so. I... think so."

"I think so too."

Trevor takes a few steps to the side, bringing them closer. He gives Robbie a look as if he's about to say something horrible, and he knows it, but he cannot stop himself from doing it.

"If you love him, you must have a lot of insight into his mind," Trevor says, with a flicker of uncertainty in his voice. "I've spent eight years wondering without being able to ask you, so... why do you think he did it?"

Robbie has to stop where he's standing, unable to think on his feet about something so deep. Why did Charlie do what he did? He was upset about Kirby, sure, and maybe he was dissatisfied with his best friend being in love with him when he couldn't get the attention of any girls, and maybe he shouldn't have been watching _Stab_  if he couldn't divorce those events from reality, and maybe Jill manipulated him. All of those things seemed like contributing factors in Robbie's mind. But he doesn't want to admit that Charlie Walker, _his_  Charlie Walker, might be at fault or at all flawed, might be at all associated with jealousy or anger or lust or any other negative quality, so he gives an evasive answer that is as close to the truth he knows as he can get to it without blaspheming his memory of his best friend in the world.

"I think... I think he knew he was meant for something bigger than this, bigger than me, bigger than what he had. It must have pulled at him every day of his life. And then he watched _Stab_ , and met Jill, and it all came together, but, really, he was mistaken, and he was intended to do something else..." Robbie says. "But by the time he realized that, if he realized it at all, it was too late, and he had already done the worst. You know?"

Trevor stops in his tracks and peers over his shoulder, back at Robbie. Robbie's heart sputters in his chest beneath Trevor's judgment, and Robbie forgets who Trevor is now, forgets the years, forgets the fact that it is Trevor who sacrificed his time, his safety, and Olivia's happiness to take Robbie out here to see Charlie, and, suddenly, Robbie is back in high school, where Trevor would have smacked him in the back of the head and called him something profane for being so nonchalant about actions like Charlie's; for a moment, Robbie finds himself sitting on the fountain in Woodsboro, where just that had happened so long ago. But the memory brings him a small shot of happiness as he remembers what he once had in his friends, his life, his vlog, Cinema Club. And Charlie. Most importantly, above all, _Charlie_.

A deep breath hitches in Trevor's mouth, but he says nothing, and Robbie can't tell if Trevor agrees or not, so he goes on.

"I grew up next to him. Met him on the first day of kindergarten and loved him ever since. I got to watch him go from a little dorky kid who thought I was kinda cool into this magnetic, charismatic... _beautiful_  man that I would never, ever deserve."

Robbie takes a few steps to catch up with Trevor before they both start walking again, as if on cue.

"And Cinema Club...?" he continues. "Cinema Club was a trip. No one else looked at him like I did until we were there, and then everyone respected him as soon as they were seated. Their heads turned when he walked into the room, and their eyes glittered when he addressed them, and it was just so electric, dude. You could tell what a god everyone thought he was. People talked about him there, looked at him like he knew everything there was to know. And he did. He was the only person in the entire school who knew more about movies than me."

The last thought Robbie needs enters his head, appearing alongside the lump that is suddenly forming in his throat as the longing threatens to topple him, but he overpowers the onset of nostalgic grief just long enough for him to speak of the bittersweet yet again.

"He was a legend, but he was a legend especially to me, and I don't want to believe he'd ever kill someone unless he thought it was his destiny."

"You... really do love him."

"More than anything," Robbie agrees.

It crosses his mind that Trevor has said very little in response. He swallows back the lump bulging in his airway. His sorrow means nothing right now, because, soon, sooner than he believes, he will find Charlie, and they will be together forever, to never separate again. It will be just like the good old days, before Kirby took Charlie away from Robbie on the same night they became accessories to a crime, before Charlie's betrayal, before Robbie's death. Things will be back to the way they should be, and Robbie will never have to feel bad ever, ever again.

"I never looked at things through your eyes," Trevor says. "And I'm not really sure what to think, now."

Robbie sighs.

"I know I talk like I'm an expert, but I really don't know what to think, either."

The rest of the trip is mostly silent, punctuated with shared glances and a quiet understanding of each other and their motives. There is Trevor, giving up his status quo to do something to save an old friend from his inner turmoil. There is Robbie, who remembered, who waited, who never let go of the flickering spark of hope caught in his palms that, one day, Charlie would return to him. Robbie has never felt closer to Trevor in his life, and he hopes Trevor feels the same. Trevor will never inspire the feelings in Robbie that Charlie does, but Robbie will never be able to forget what Trevor's done to redeem himself, and, now, Robbie's more loyal to Trevor than he's ever been before.

As time wares on, even though Robbie's feet are throbbing beneath him and his legs are shaky and unsure, Robbie never suggests that they stop, and Trevor never brings up the idea, either. This must have cut their travel time down significantly, because Robbie thinks it's only a matter of a few hours before they come up a small incline and he spots something dark looming over the horizon of the pastel plain.

But before he can ask what it is, Trevor has him covered.

"There it is," Trevor says. "You see it?"

Robbie takes it all in for a moment. It's like a cloud of black smoke rising up in the distance, thick and inpenetrable and lightless, smothering out the pale, gentle pinks and bright colors of their surroundings. He lets the faint breeze ruffle his hair as he watches, and, then, he's seen enough.

"Simba, all the light touches is our kingdom..." he says with his best James Earl Jones impression, blatantly fake but good enough to get the point across; he hears Trevor giggle like a third-grader beside him. But Trevor thinking that Robbie's an idiot who can't see a foot in front of his face does not concern Robbie at all, not when they're both in such high spirits. "Is that where Charlie is?"

"That's my Mercer," Trevor says. His tone falls. "...No promises."

"There's no time to waste! Come on!"

Despite the exhaustion burning in his limbs, aching in his muscles, burning in his lungs, Robbie breaks into a run. He's not the fittest guy on the planet, and never was; he's more scrawny and small than anything else. But with Charlie looming ahead of him, the closest he's been since the night Robbie died, Robbie looks over his shoulder and finds that even Trevor is lagging behind him, unable to keep up. He slows his pace a little, but it's one of the hardest things he's ever had to do.

As they run, the blackness in the distance grows larger and larger, closer and closer. Robbie has never felt this hyped. It's so close. And yet... it's so far. His legs burn and his chest aches and his heart is pounding, but he's fine. He's not going to admit that he should slow down and rest, because, if he slows down and rests, that is several minutes of space and time between him and Charlie that shouldn't be there.

"Geez, slow down, man!" Trevor says.

"No way!" Robbie's the happiest he's been in years. "He's in there! He's... _in there_!"

"And he'll still be there if you slow down!"

"Bite me, Trev!"

"Where?"

"On the ear!"

Robbie hears Trevor laugh through his ragged breathing, a strangled, scratchy chuckle that is genuine all the same, and Robbie is surprised that Trevor has enough air to do it, the way he's struggling.

"Hold your ass still, then, douchebag!" Trevor shouts.

"Slut!"

"It's been eight years! _Eight_  years, Mercer!"

And Robbie is convinced it is all a well-balanced, well-planned ploy, silently agreed on between the both of them, to keep themselves from fearing what could happen in that smoky expanse ahead, the smoky expanse that they are approaching at a speed that both alarms and relieves Robbie. It would be exactly like Trevor, even living Trevor, to try to shield the people he cares about from worry—his clingy behavior toward Jill during the murders was proof enough of that—and it would be exactly like Robbie to lie to himself like he's been lying to himself about various things since... _puberty_?

They're still closing rapidly in on the darkness that splits the soft pastels. Here, the air, which smells faintly of damp moss, is a little thicker, a little harder to breathe, and Robbie slows not because he wants to, but because he has to.

If Trevor notices, he makes no remark.

A few minutes later, the grass ahead of them has thinned out until the pale soil beneath is visible in marbled swirls disguised only by the thin, patchy sprouts now the gray-pink color of an old scar. Robbie's steps slow a little more, into a fast walk. Without the thick, long grass and their bundles of roots to hold the earth in place, the ground gives beneath Robbie's feet like he's walking across a sandy beach, and running is difficult because he can't jump off either foot like he's used to.

Ahead of him, all he can see are the clouds, the color of soot, of swirling, blending haze, a wall that rises up as far as he can see. It's virtually opaque; the only time he can see inside is when the murk drifts apart, revealing a tiny, tiny crack, and that is not often. Robbie is astonished, astonished by the size of it all, astonished by how the exact opposite color scheme hangs on the edge of something so beautiful, but most astonished by the fact that Charlie, _his_  Charlie, is trapped inside. That hurts him deeper than he thought it would, and he was expecting it to be a crippling sort of pain anyway.

"What is this place?" Robbie asks, without looking away from the barrier. He comes to a stop, relieved that he'll no longer have to hear the squish of the ground beneath his feet.

"There's a lot of them, and they're all different," Trevor says. "This is Charlie's."

Robbie takes another step, some hybrid of uncertain and hesitant. He reaches toward the barrier but pulls his hand away, in case it hurts him. He can't see through the darkness, and he doesn't know what might lurk behind it.

"...But what _is_  it?" he asks.

"I don't... know." Trevor clears his throat. "How long should I wait?"

It's an ominous question, one that puts forward the full stakes of the situation for Robbie to observe. Despite the amount of times Trevor, doing his best to grapple the situation, Robbie presumes, has warned him, Robbie never really took the time to consider what the consequences might be if something didn't go according to plan. And here Trevor is, in one sentence giving Robbie a fucking heart attack as he realizes just how screwed he might be.

But his instinct of self-preservation isn't strong enough to beat out his instinct to seek out the only person who made him happy through nearly four years of high school, the person he carries a crude drawing of in his pants pocket, the person who he's been after since the moment his breathing stopped and he opened his eyes to see his grandmother standing in front of him to lead him out of his life, so young and fit and bright that he barely recognized her. His desire to go back and stay safe and the anxiety churning in his stomach isn't enough to keep him away from Charlie, even the faintest chance of finding Charlie. Robbie will never give up hope, and he will wander that hellscape until he either collapses of exhaustion and fades into dust or runs into what he's looking for.

Robbie, as if he were a sniper about to make his mark, peers up at Trevor.

"I don't know. Take a break, nap a while, enjoy yourself. When you can't possibly stand it, wait a little longer," Robbie says, but when he sees the uncertainty prickling in Trevor's denim gaze, he clarifies with an amount. "Maybe a day or two, if that's not too much to ask, because I feel like it might be..."

"I didn't bring entertainment, but, like you said, take a nap, whatever. It's nice not having to sleep unless I want to, but I miss it—Olivia keeps me up all night, if you catch my drift."

"More than I wanted to know, my dude."

"I am aware."

Robbie has no idea how they can joke in such circumstances.

"But if I'm not back in that time, you know what's happened, or that I'm lost and I'll never find you, and you're free to go," Robbie says softly.

With a solemn look, eyes glistening, mouth a straight, flat line, Trevor nods, and Robbie feels some sort of solidarity formed between them, a silent kind that acknowledges just how serious this is. And Robbie's sure that when he swings his head around to look up at the barrier, Trevor's eyes chase him. Robbie takes a deep breath.

"Okay," Robbie says.

He presses a hand against the barrier; it gives around his limb, and the murky darkness behind it spills out in a small cloud of mist that cloaks his fingers in moisture. Then he inserts his other hand and tugs them apart, until a sizable hole has opened.

"Be careful," Trevor warns, in a tone that reminds Robbie of his mother, and a tone Robbie's still not familiar with him using, even after knowing him post-death, post-learning and after his resolutions to avoid invoking suffering as the consequence of his actions ever again, for twice as long as Robbie knew him in high school.

And Robbie _is_  being careful, by doing this first. Only now can he see what's behind the blackness; there's a thin strip of gray grass, and, then, more charred trees than Robbie thinks he has ever seen in his life. Or, at least, trees dark enough to appear burnt. He doesn't know the rules of what he's entering, except that everything seems to be monochrome.

Robbie's not sure about this place; fear tosses in his gut with some kind of jerky, frantic choreography. The reek of smoke and wood rot fills his lungs. He wants to turn back; Trevor wouldn't be mad at him if he pussied out. In fact, Robbie thinks Trevor might be relieved.

He wonders what Trevor's motive is for helping him do this. Was it simple kindness and a desire to mentor someone hurting more than him and guide them to salvation, or does Trevor have some kind of reward, real or imagined, that he'll get if he lures Robbie in there? At first, Robbie stops. Who would live here? Charlie sure wouldn't.

But then he reminds himself that this is Trevor, and, at least for now, in this moment, not in the past and perhaps not in the future, he trusts Trevor.

And his need for his Charlie overpowers any other emotion he might ever have, always.

He pulls his hands back against his body and steps into the blackness. The barrier collapses around him, and, in a flash of darkness, he is standing on the grass on ground much more solid, looking into a forest so dark that he can barely see his own feet on the ground beneath him through the smoke that hangs in the air.

Robbie glances behind him, just to see if he can see the barrier. He can. It bobs like ripples on the surface of a pond, semi-transparent; Trevor's outline stands behind it, big shoulders slumped, head cocked as if to stare off into the black ahead of him to try to see Robbie, and even though he's just a mere shadow against the wall, Robbie is astounded by what his posture says about his current emotional state.

Robbie looks back ahead and takes a few unsteady steps backward. His legs are shaking, and he can hardly breathe through the smoke. He turns around and tries to poke his hand through the barrier again; he wants to check in on Trevor one last time.

It won't go through.

Hopefully, he can walk through when Trevor opens it.

Trevor must have spotted Robbie through the swirling of the barrier, because he puts a fist in and spreads it to make a little window. The light that spills over Robbie makes his eyes burn, after taking in the dark forest.

"You better not be giving up," he says, but there's some sort of strength in his voice that indicates to Robbie that he doesn't actually believe Robbie would ever give up on Charlie.

"No," Robbie says, stopping to glance over his shoulder. "This place gives me the creeps, but... that's not the problem. I can't get back through on my own. I don't need you for moral support anymore. I need you to get me out when I'm done."

Trevor reaches his other hand in and grabs Robbie's shoulder.

"It's transparent on the other side, right?"

"Yeah. I can see you."

"I'll sit here for three days. Find the border and walk it until you see me if you get lost."

"Okay."

Robbie goes to turn away, but he stops when he hears Trevor.

"And, Robbie?" Trevor gives him a forlorn look, big eyes glossy and filled with grief for something he hasn't lost yet. "If you don't come back, I'm sorry."

"I plan to come back. With Charlie. But I appreciate it either way," he says, and then he suddenly stiffens up. "Thank you, Trevor. Thank you so, so much."

Trevor smiles, a movement that trembles across a face lit with worry, but immediately bites his lip and lets his gaze drop.

Robbie starts across the grass. The light filtering through the window shuts away against his back, until he is plunged into the gaping mouth of the darkness. He stumbles around for a bit, until he's deep in the trees with his heart thundering wildly in his chest. The roots lean out beneath his feet, making every step a tripping roulette, and the black undergrowth is thick, tangling around his ankles and knees.

But, despite all that, he calls Charlie's name, because he trusts Trevor's word as to Charlie being here. He's too desperate not to.

"Charlie?"

Robbie takes a few more steps and yells again, a little louder.

Some plant rustles.

There is Charlie. As soon as Charlie spots Robbie, his eyes glint with alarm; his mouth drops open in a round, tight circle.

"Robbie?!"

" _Charlie_!"

Robbie has never been so happy in his entire life. He can't even feel the ground beneath his feet as he rushes for Charlie; all he knows and all he sees and all he thinks of and hears is what's right in front of him, the person who has evaded his grasp for eight long years.

 _It's come to this_ , he thinks. _It's finally happening!_

His whole body feels tight and loose and hot and cold, a rollercoaster of feeling and experience, and every step he takes fades into another without any effort at all despite the thick plant growth beneath his feet, because all he can think about is the goal. The end.

Charlie.

 _Charlie_.

Charlie is what he has come here for, and all he'll ever be.

Seconds later, Robbie collides with him, arms tight around his shoulders, sending him stumbling back across the forest floor, and Robbie feels his weight, his heat, and never before has he felt so satisfied.

Eight years. Eight fucking years. And it's all culminated into this, right here. What he has now.

"Charlie," he says, repeating the word into Charlie's ear as if it's his only comfort, and that's because it is. "I... I finally found you! I missed you so much!"

The relief shaking in his own voice is striking, and he can feel the way it affects the weight of each syllable in his mouth; everything feels lighter, easier, natural. This is just how he always thought talking to Charlie for the first time in forever would feel. Natural, because if Charlie was ever his friend in the first place, they would still feel comfortable around each other, even after so long.

He tightens his grip on Charlie. He can't let go. He's afraid that if he lets go again, Charlie will be gone, disappearing into thin air, and everything he's done to get here will be for nothing.

There's a silence.

"Get off of me," Charlie says, without much emotion either way for Robbie to tell if he's joking or serious.

Robbie stumbles back, a little hurt, but almost sure it was a bad joke. However, Charlie isn't smiling, or laughing, not that Robbie expects someone as hollow as him to laugh, and Robbie bites his lip. He's almost in tears either way. He found Charlie. He fucking found him. After so long, they're together again, as it should be. The happiness far outweighs the sadness, and, now that Charlie's by his side, Robbie thinks that he'll never feel sad again.

"I can't believe it's you!" he says, and then he notices the blood permeating Charlie's shirt, and Robbie's entire soul freezes. He points a finger at the wounds. "Wait... what happened?"

"Jill happened."

"Jill did that?!"

Charlie rolls his eyes.

Robbie blinks, horrified.

"They told me she lost her mind, but I didn't think she—"

"Get out of here and leave me to suffer in peace," Charlie says, cutting Robbie off mid-sentence. He turns away and begins to walk back into the forest.

"Hey, wait! You're my best friend, remember? Cinema Club and all that. We were like brothers, man," Robbie says. He's sort of shocked by it all. He expected Charlie to be happy to see him. He expected Charlie to embrace him and be begging to go back and be with him forever. He doesn't know why he thought that. Part of him thinks that Charlie might be less than what Robbie remembered him as. Perhaps time warped him into a better person in Robbie's mind.

Whatever happened, Charlie isn't what Robbie thought he would be.

But Robbie still loves him.

Charlie turns back and shakes his head.

"Robbie, it's not like that anymore," he whispers, but it sounds like a scream, in the silence of the forest. "I _killed_  you. Quit clinging to who you think I am, because I'm not that person anymore."

"I _know_  who you really are," Robbie says back, but he doesn't believe it. Not anymore. "And you can still be that way! You can come back and be with me! I've... I've got a friend waiting for me—I'll show you to the barrier, and he'll let you through, and we can get out of here!"

Charlie _isn't_  who he was when they were seventeen. Robbie neglected to mention Trevor because he's sure Charlie doesn't want to see him, but Trevor's still fresh in Robbie's mind, and he's paralyzed by the thought that, where Trevor changed for the better, Charlie may have changed for the worse. Trevor surely isn't who he was before he died. Trevor turned from a cheat and a liar into one of the most just and empathetic people Robbie knows—maybe Charlie did the opposite type of transformation, from sweet and quiet and just cocky enough to have a functional personality into a heartless, cruel monster. Maybe this forest, constantly being surrounded by hopelessness and the demons of his bloody past, had something to do with it. Maybe it was just Jill.

Whatever it was, Robbie is starting to believe Charlie and what he says about himself.

Charlie peers over his shoulder, head high. He stares off into the shadows of the forest for a moment, and Robbie's heart fills with anticipation. Maybe he was wrong to start believing that Charlie wouldn't accept his offer. Maybe Charlie's still the person Robbie always thought he was, just morphed into something else by the manipulation, passion, and bitterness that introduced him into the idea of killing. Maybe he can still change back, and it's not too late.

Robbie thought he saw a familiar glitter in Charlie's black eyes, earlier.

Then Charlie looks back. His face is hollow, empty, the way it always is; his eyes are blank of emotion and he does not smile or frown. Robbie has no clue what he's about to say, or if he'll say anything at all.

It never used to be that way. Robbie always knew what would come out of Charlie's mouth next. They were so close that Robbie probably could have lived in his body for weeks on end and acted so in-character that no one would ever notice. He knew Charlie's favorite songs and that he had a crush on the Tiffany doll and that he used to let his cat play with one ear bud while he listened to music and that he thought holding up a crushed beer can on a hike and asking what kind of rock it was could actually have been one of the funniest things in the world. Robbie knew him better than he knew himself. And now, he's not even sure who Charlie is anymore. Robbie wants to say he knows, but, deep inside, he does not. Not now and maybe not ever.

And what Charlie says next only confirms that.

"Leave this place, Robbie," he growls. "I don't need you. All the others do is treat me like garbage, but I'm loyal to them. You mean nothing to me; those days are over, and they've been over for a long time."

The... others?

Robbie's breath hitches in his mouth.

He'll have to tell Trevor that there's others here... other Ghostfaces? Maybe Trevor already knows.

Charlie stands there even though Robbie expects him to turn back around and stalk away into the forest. Any sense of emotional ambiguity is gone—his eyes gleam with the hot edge of hatred, and he looks off at the side, away from Robbie, in a display of coldness.

Robbie can feel the lump building in his throat. He can take a hint, even if he doesn't want to.

And he really, really doesn't want to.

"I'm... not gonna go. I think you're still good, deep inside," Robbie says, barely audible over the influx of his desire to break down and sob. "Just remember that, Charlie."

Charlie chuckles a little.

"You know why we never took you, Robbie? You know why, despite all your genre expertise, we never once thought to ask you to help us?"

Robbie swallows.

"Because you're _pathetic,_ " Charlie says. "And what you just said proves it. Always seeking approval, always begging for attention. It'd have been a matter of minutes after we killed Jenny and Marnie that you'd have gone out and squealed. You never cared about anything but what people thought about you."

"You're wrong, Charlie. I cared about you. I _cared_  about you, and I still do. I think you're the best person I've ever met. No one's shaped me more. And what you did will never change that—"

"You didn't care enough to stop me."

"What?!"

Robbie's legs feel weak, like he's going to collapse at any minute. He hopes that he will. He hopes that he'll collapse and fade into nothingness. That will be the only thing that could ever begin to repair him.

Charlie's eyes harden.

"I did it because Jill said she loved me. She made me feel like I mattered, something that you never did. But it wasn't a rom-com. People were going to die no matter what, and that included you. It was what I had to do to be happy after years of suffering, and I regret nothing."

"But... I love you!" Robbie confesses, even though he's sure Charlie knows. He takes a step forward, hoping in vain that closing the space between them will make Charlie reconsider. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you what she could. I'm sorry... I'm sorry."

There's a dramatically long pause where all Robbie can hear is the breeze winding between the branches and the thundering pulse of his heartbeat, driven by his own nervousness.

Charlie blinks.

"I do have to admit, Robbie, that you and Kirby were the two I felt bad for. Mostly because I knew that this was how you'd react if I ever saw you again. Rules are rules, though."

"Rules?!" Robbie shrieks, because it's all he can do to keep from crying. "You broke your own rules! You knew I was gay—I _told_  you I was gay! Gays survive!"

"But it was a remake. The overarching rule of remakes? The unexpected is the new cliché. What's more unexpected than breaking your own rules? And you know what horror movies run on? _Clichés._  The killer coming back. The blonde ditz. Tripping over air. You should know that better than anyone."

"...Charlie. Come on. We'll... We can go back together. Come on. You, me. Old times."

"I suggest you leave before someone with more sense than me hurts you."

Robbie's pleading was entirely useless, the opposite of what he'd thought it'd be. Charlie strides back into the undergrowth, and Robbie watches his form disappear until it is totally invisible beneath the cover of the smoky darkness. Despite knowing it's pointless, Robbie can't fight the urge to try to get him back.

"Charlie, wait! Charlie! _Charlie_!"

His cries do nothing.

"...I love you," he says, much softer. He's anything but astonished by the shaking in his voice.

He'd say he's disappointed, but disappointment implies that there was some sort of hope to begin with, and, though hope once burned deep inside of him like fire, it has all been smothered out.

Now, Robbie feels the first tear fall, and he lets it, even though he knows every tear will buy another. He tried his best, and yet his best wasn't enough. It never seemed to be enough. He wants to go cry into Trevor's chest and tell him all of the horrible things Charlie said, all of the things that are making him lose faith in himself and in his friendship with Charlie. He very routinely hates it when Trevor bothers him, but, right now, he's both grateful Trevor gave him the chance to do this and seeking comfort from someone or anyone, and Trevor is the only thing he has left.

He never once thought while he was alive that _Trevor_  would be the last person sticking up for him.

It's a scary thought for Robbie, to think that he doesn't have Charlie. He's been living on the idea for eight years that he'd get Charlie back, and, before that, that Charlie would always be there. But now it's confirmed that Charlie doesn't want him, and Robbie's whole world has shifted, changed in size, in intensity.

In loneliness.

Trevor's the only person who cares about him, and he finds that depressing.

Robbie sets off for the border. Now that Trevor's all he's got, he'll have to think about him a lot more, starting with what he'll say when he sees Robbie approaching, head low, eyes glistening with tears. Old school Trevor would give him a distant, "I told you so" and a heartless chuckle. But the new Trevor? Robbie expects some kind of sympathy, because even if he doesn't really feel like he deserves it, he wants it.

Of course he doesn't deserve it, though. What kind of a best friend is he? He couldn't convince Charlie to leave a miserable forest where he, apparently, gets pushed around all the time. And Charlie admitted himself that he doesn't have any feelings for Robbie anymore. Does someone like Robbie, who inspired that level of hatred in the person who was supposed to be his best friend, really deserve anything?

Anxiety clenches in Robbie's heaving chest; he has to question everything he's wanted since he died.

And, of all the _maybes_  he has thought, one strikes him more strongly than the others.

Maybe _this_ , going to find Charlie, was never meant to be.


	10. Mickey - Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy 16th birthday to me, my present to myself is finally finishing this damn chapter

"It's time," the Father says.

Mickey's heart seizes in his throat. It's... _time_? That could only mean one thing. A smile runs over his face. He forces it back. As excited as he is to gain his revenge, as much as he knows he's being manipulated by Roman and Billy and that he literally could not bring himself to care, as much as he wants to slash a throat and close his mouth over the wound to drink the blood, he feels... guilt? What the fuck is _guilt_? But he feels it, and it's because of what happened to Charlie.

Is it remorse for not helping? Because Mickey's out for himself. Charlie's friendship is merely a gift, and not one he should ever have to sacrifice himself for. No one should have to put in effort for something presented to them. But Mickey has to admit he's a little disappointed Charlie might not come back, and a little disappointed that the Father's plan probably doesn't involve poor, neglected Charlie. It feels like only seconds ago that Charlie raced off into the woods—Mickey figures it's been... _twenty_  minutes? Thirty? They've been standing here in the hollow in uncomfortably anxious silence for what seems like forever. Whatever, it hurts a little, but not a lot. Or, at least, that's what Mickey will admit to himself.

It's confusing, upsetting, in a way he's never felt before, when he's seen people as tools and toys and oppression and never peers, or more than peers, and Mickey would much rather downplay it.

"So," the Father says. He floats in a loopy circle before drifting up to one of the tree branches over the portal and seating himself there, legs hanging. It's big, sturdy, and low on the tree, a good pulpit from which to preach his word. Mickey's surprised the Father's never done it before, and next to Mickey, Stu and Debbie tense, because they know it's serious. The Son paces up to stand underneath the branch, and if there were birds, Mickey would hope he'd get shit on. Would serve him right.

And the Father does something Mickey doesn't expect, and he beckons to Jill.

"Cousin," he says, his voice soft and gentle, like he thinks he's the next Bob Ross. Mickey's sure that he could utter the phrase "happy little accidents" and it wouldn't seem out of place. "Come join us."

Mickey turns his head. Jill's black eyes, her brown-and-red pupils gleaming with pride, widen.

"Gladly," she sniffs. "About time, too."

As she steps over to stand next to Billy, Mickey wonders how Sidney _ever_ put up with Jill, if she were so sarcastic. Then again... she probably had a veneer. The same way Mickey did, and Mickey has to admit that he admires that.

And the Father bows his head, and, then, he speaks.

"I'm sure you all are excited to hop right into this. We slaved over the portal for years, we tested it with our most expendable members, we've done all we can to make sure this is going to turn out right. And yet, I feel a twinge of doubt in you."

Even Jill does not speak.

"Now is the chance to prove yourselves," the Father says. "Sidney comes later. For now, I'll give you all—minus Charlie, of course—"

Mickey is so angry that he can feel his _hair_ bristling, and that is not a feeling that comes to someone like him too often.

"—a chance to prove yourselves to me. A chance to be the killers you were in life even in death. A chance to... kill the ones who, too, were responsible for your defeat."

"Gee, wonder who _this_  is," Stu whispers to Debbie.

"Be quiet," Jill snaps, powertripping already, it seems.

"Today, I'll send the rest of you out, and I'll supervise from afar. I guess Charlie can do as he likes. He'll be fine, for the moment. He's not as useless as we like to say he is, you know."

Stu cheers. Debbie shushes him before the Son has a chance to. Mickey is a little jealous; he'd _kill_ —metaphorically, of course, given that killing is sort of his thing—for the chance to smack Stu in the face and tell him that while killing in life might have been a joke, it's not that way any longer, and, perhaps, it never should have been. Then again, that would probably go in one ear, out the other, like just about anything. And then the Son would be mad, because he and his mother and occasionally the Father, when he's not too busy, are the only ones who are supposed to pick on Stu.

There's a short moment of silence, a hesitant breath for everyone to gather their thoughts that Mickey uses to stew in his bitterness.

"Are you ready?!" the Father shouts.

Silence.

"I asked a question!"

The Son's eyes sparkle. "Yes!"

And Jill catches on, and shouts the same thing. And there goes Debbie, and Stu, until the last person standing is Mickey; he parrots like a good boy. It's what he does best, concealing his true feelings. A sociopath who cares about... _one_  person, and even that's a little debatable, gets to be quite good at not spouting out the first thing that comes to mind. He had to keep up a normal façade from when he was born, the first tiny breath of his existence, to maybe five, ten minutes at most, before he died, this façade of being kind and cool and a little rowdy but overall noble, and it made him a fantastic liar, contributing to a talent already inborn.

Sure, he wants to kill, but he's reluctant to do things for the Father. He always has been. He listened to Debbie—Mrs. Loomis, but she's owned herself, her identity—out of desperation.

The Father grins.

"Unlike Kirby, Gale and Dewey still live in Woodsboro. I had enough energy to reroute it; you'll be landing right there. Head on."  
  
As if a breeze turned them all around, they glance back at the glow, a little fainter than it used to be, of the portal. It embraces the forest in its light, and even though Mickey's, one, been through it, and, two, been standing here for quite a long time, his eyes haven't quite adjusted. He's been bathed in darkness for so long that he's surprised he even  _can_ still see—perhaps the only reason he hasn't gone blind is that he's dead—and it almost hurts, the brightness. He's too violent and evil for this, thank you very much, and he acknowledges it himself, totally self-aware of his crimes in a way many like him aren't. He's also aware of something else.  
  
He does not want to go through the portal again.  
  
But everyone else is headed toward it, hand in hand— _metaphorically_ , of course. They're not that close, even if they all wore the same costume. But, even the Son and Jill, both obsessed with the idea of being better than everyone, are equal now, have the same goal! They haven't been united like this... ever. Even though they did the same thing to achieve their desires, their desires themselves weren't the same. Billy wanted to kill Sidney and ruin her father's legacy, Stu was a psycho who would have killed anyone for any reason, Debbie wanted to avenge her son's death, Mickey wanted to get caught and become a media firestorm, Roman was jealous that Maureen acknowledged Sidney as her child but not him, Jill wanted to become the modern Sidney so she could be rich and famous, and Charlie was... lonely and obsessive. Right now, however, all they want is to kill Dewey and Gale. They're basically a hivemind of horror trivia and violent tendencies, marching together to accomplish the same goal. It's beautiful, but the beauty is not enough to convince Mickey to want to go. He wants Dewey and Gale dead, but he doesn't want to have to put in the effort.  
  
However, Mickey, never one to happily be left out, never one to willingly be left behind, heads after them. When he leaps up to meet Jill and the Son, he glances over his shoulder. The Father is gone.  
  
"At least the Father didn't make us take Goatface," Jill hisses. "Every time I look at him, I remember how bad he was in the sack and my vagina shrivels into a dry wrinkled sock. You really played the long con there, Son."

"No con. Just keeping things in order—useless sidekicks at the bottom. I mean, have you ever seen a good slasher where the killer isn't center stage and has some pathetic little fame-seeker riding his ass? Even the supernatural shit doesn't try pulling that," Billy says. "Nothing like him, especially. He's a disgrace to the genre. What even  _was_  his motive?"

Mickey grunts. " _Puppet Master_."

"I said  _good_  and  _slasher_ , Mick. Can't keep up? Keep your head down. Jill, motive?"

"Pussy," Jill says.

Stu licks his lips. His lazy, blind eye, burnt out by the television dropped on his face, Mickey thinks, flickers with interest. He grins. "He couldn't get it by himself? Him and his  _Home Alone_  mug? Color  _me_  surprised."

"Shut your mouth, Stu," Billy snaps.

Stu shuts right up.  
  
Mickey seethes in silence.  _Puppet Master_  is a good movie, no matter what Billy says. And it might not be the original slasher formula, but it  _is_  a slasher. And that doesn't even mention the way they're talking about his best friend, his Charlie, the only person who's kept him sane (or as sane as someone like Mickey can be) in this damn forest with its damn political hierarchy fueled by who's the most charming and who has the most status and who's the most willing to turn on their brethren and strangle them in front of an audience.

Mickey's still not over that. Maybe he did nothing out of self-preservation, maybe he did nothing because he wanted to watch. But, whatever happened there, the Son's on his bad side, now. And it is dangerous to be on the bad side of someone like Mickey. Mickey will do something to screw Billy over, at some point. Neither of them know when, and neither of them know where, but Mickey knows he'll do it, and he'll get caught. The only other thing Mickey knows is that he wants to do it publicly, so all the other Ghostface killers are scared of him, and he wants to do it after he gets revenge, so that he has Billy's help when he goes to kill Sidney.

Mickey got his pleasure out of what happened to Charlie, and now the reality is setting in, like it almost never does.

He'll do something about it.

It just won't be now.  
  
Debbie rests her hand on Billy's shoulder. A smile, her teeth still red with her own blood from God knows how many years ago, rises across her face.

"How's it feel to finally be getting rid of Sidney's friends? Are you excited?"

"Of course, Mom. Of course. Not as excited as I am to finally rip Sidney's throat out, finally see the life leave her eyes... but that can wait."

Mickey, for as much as he hates the Son's treatment of him and Charlie, for as much as he fears saying the wrong thing and being strangled, too, as he's free of the protections Jill has, for as much as he hates Debbie and what she did, is happy that Billy's relationship with his mother has been repaired.

The only problem there, that isn't the fact that it only makes it easier for Mickey to be the bottom of the pyramid, is that, soon, when the time presents itself, Mickey will do something to end it all.  
  
Now they're feet away from the portal, and a pensively reverent silence drifts over them as they look into the child of their (minus Mickey's!) fruitful efforts. It's come to this. It's time. They all know it, and even though it's a moment like any, any other, it is special. This is it. And as soon as Mickey takes one step into the lights, he begins to disappear into a tornado of dust and mist, tugged forcibly through the brightness and into a shaky short of unconsciousness, one Mickey is fully aware that he's entering. He's slipping, slipping, slipping away, and he can't seem to—  
  
Here they are.

When Mickey opens his eyes, there isn't as much contrast as there was before. The shadows seem to engulf him, and there really isn't a difference between here and the forest. At first, Mickey wonders if the portal failed. If so... Mickey's all types of sure that the others will blame _him_ , and that he'll have to run off like Charlie did. Maybe, if he does, he'll find Charlie—

Why does he want to find Charlie? Charlie is weak. By all accounts, it doesn't make sense. Charlie is a good, worthy companion, loyal, passionate, everything Mickey could have asked for in his fellow underdog, but he is still just weak. His weakness is an asterisk tacked onto everything he's ever done and everything he'll ever do, and Mickey, out for himself and for himself alone, should not associate with weakness at any time.

But Mickey's defied what's rational, defied what will help him, defied _who he is as a person_  to be near Charlie. And, more than anything else, Mickey knows what that means. He knows _exactly_  what that means. He's only seen it before in movies, and it's foreign to him, but damn if he doesn't know it. Movies have taught him everything, this included.

Mickey blinks. The shadows around him, dark as tar and mottled and blurred with the silhouettes of his surroundings, swirling and turning, disperse in a few fading movements. This must be Gale and Dewey's hallway. It's a nice house; it reminds Mickey a little of where he was raised.

There was never anything wrong with Mickey's upbringing. There was always food on the table, a vacation every year, and warm, loving faces when he came home from school. That is—was? Roman said Charlie was okay, but Mickey can't help but be paranoid—something he and Charlie had in common. They weren't ever abused, neglected, or mistreated. They were never molested or traumatized. They were the children of reasonably well-off families with every opportunity they could ever need given to them, and they just grew to be fucked up for absolutely no reason at all, no matter how much Mickey exaggerated his "horrible childhood" to Debbie over the Internet. Mickey and Charlie had no external reason at all to want to kill, at least not a reason that lay in the depths of their pasts, and this house, its homey interior with somewhat expensive furniture and decor, serves as a reminder of that even after Mickey's life has become wholly irrelevant.

Next to Mickey, rising from his crouch, the Son clears his throat.

"Is everyone all right?" he whispers.

Through the dim light, Mickey turns his head, spotting the glow of Jill's dark eyes, and he watches her nod. Debbie's next to her, hunched on the floor in a coil that reminds Mickey vaguely of a cinnamon roll. Mickey just wishes that Debbie were equally inanimate, because that would make things much easier. And there's Stu, on his knees like he's in a confession box, eyes clamped shut, his muscles tensed beneath his burns and bunching up into bulges that look as hard as concrete, his lanky legs spread a little further than they should be for the position he's in. At first, Mickey thinks Stu is hurt. Then he flashes a tentative thumbs-up, body shaking, fingers unsure.

Yes, everyone's here, and all right, too—Debbie rolls over and tries to push herself to her feet, but collapses onto her belly.

"Mom, take it easy," Billy says. "Mickey, Stu, find them. Hold them down. If they run, drag them like you're acting out _Texas Chainsaw_."

Mickey swallows and looks around some more. The stairs seem promising. It's been what, twenty years since he died? Because that's not nearly enough time to forget that bedrooms are generally upstairs. He shuffles forward. The floorboards wheeze beneath his feet. He reminds himself to be careful, but careful is such a foreign concept to Mickey that it does little good.

And, evidently, it did no good for Stu, either, because, while he's producing only a muffled thumping noise much lighter than Mickey's own, Mickey can practically _feel_ Stu's footsteps through the floor.

"Isn't this thrilling?" Stu asks. "You, me, minus costumes, cover of night."

"Of course," Mickey says. "The psycho in me is obsessed right about now. It's hypnotic. And I'm not just saying that because I'm self-aware... though I am."

"I don't know... the last time I was self-aware, someone dropped a television on my face."

"Quiet. We're getting close."

Stu's voice drops into a whisper. "So, huh, who would have guessed that killing Dewey and Gale would be the best way to reboot the franchise?"

"Quit talking like Charlie and _be quiet._ "

"Yeah, whatever, man," Stu says, meeting Mickey's gaze even with his blind eye. It is unnerving, the glint that seems to rest in that one milky, sightless abyss, black with no pupil and lots of fluid around the rim, giving it a glossy, watery appearance, like he's about to cry out of one eye. "Ooh, wait. You like Charlie, so maybe I will."

But Stu's voice stays low. Even the constant disrespect flowing between them as if through a pyramid scheme cannot break the bond they share as Ghostface. Mickey is reminded that, though the others may hate him, resent him, constantly abuse him, everyone residing in that dark, filthy forest is on his side, absolutely. They just have a very funny way of showing it all.

When they reach the top of the stairs, Mickey and Stu exchange a glance. There's a door down the hallway with a tiny sliver of light emerging from it, illuminating the space much more effectively than the pale moonlight trickling through the window. People do not generally sleep with the lights on.  
  
Fuck, they woke up Dewey.  
  
Mickey silently curses Stu and takes an uneasy step forward, anxiety turning knots inside him. The floorboard moans, low, deep, reverberating. And now Mickey hears faint conversation from behind the door.  
  
Ignoring the other doors and with Stu tight on his back, Mickey advances despite the tension feeling as though it weighs a good fifty pounds inside him, advances with his heart a racehorse in his chest, advances with Michael Myers flashing through his reeling head, and he throws the door open—  
  
Television.  
  
They fell asleep somewhere else with the lights and the television on.  
  
"Holy shit, man," Stu whispers, following it with a small, hushed giggle.  
  
Mickey has never before felt the urge to laugh and cry all at once, perhaps because emotions that aren't direct results of his urge to survive (nervousness and anger, pretty much) are such a foreign concept to him. He backtracks, not even caring that Stu is behind him—"Seriously? Didn't your mother tell you to take turns?"—and heads toward the next room. It isn't his fault that Gale and Dewey have another bedroom with a TV.  
  
_Keep going this way._  
  
For once, Mickey actually  _listens_ to the Father without even a hint of reluctance or a brief moment of pensive hesitation as he weighs the reasons why he should care about what Maureen Prescott's bastard child has to say. Mickey's sure the Father can read these thoughts, too, and he's absolutely sure the Father knows about how close he and Charlie have become, but, for once, Mickey does not have to care what people think of him, not the way he was when he was alive and he had to hide his dark urges and not the way he's been dead, and it is relaxing but uncomfortable, like stepping into a bubbling hot tub, too hot but also perfect.  
  
"This way," Mickey says, again, parroting like a good boy.  
  
Stu blinks. "I heard it too, man."  
  
The Father talks to Stu? Mickey wouldn't put it past him. Stu's just as much of a Ghostface as everybody else. He's less of a joke than Mickey and Charlie are.  
  
Mickey and Stu walk side-by-side until they reach the door. They both take deep breaths—Mickey hears the whistle where the bullet punctured his lungs and he hears Stu's breaths morph into a half-cough, half-mumble followed by a trail of blood oozing from his blue-tinged lips.  
  
There's a small shifting noise in the distance, like a pencil on paper, that indicates someone in the bedroom is stirring. Mickey opens the door. He feels Stu press up behind him.  
  
_There_ they are.  
  
Gale is awake in bed; Mickey lunges at her full-force, shoves her to the mattress again, hands tight on her shoulders, reaching up to her hair, striking with deft punches at her exposed face. The commotion of Stu tackling Dewey rings hot in Mickey's ears.  
  
"We've got 'em!" Stu shouts. "We've got 'em!"  
  
And more commotion. Gale knees Mickey in the groin. This pain is too much for him even in a world where his gunshot wounds ache and have ached every hour since the moment he died, and Mickey buckles with a pained squeal of half-agony, half-surprise... right on top of her. When he falls, he falls hard, winding himself, and something grabs him. Mickey screams as teeth puncture his neck, pinching into his flesh like he got himself caught in a door, except a deeper, more desperate sort of pain. He can feel the blood oozing out over his shoulder. He looks to his side. It's all black, like when Charlie fell out of a tree and scraped his elbow; dark fluid welled up there and the wound did not heal.  
  
"Fucking  _bitch_!" Mickey snarls, striking out at Gale with his palms. She turns her head, exposing her throat. Mickey launches right in, grabbing as hard as he can, and she gurgles, a last attempt at achieving airflow. Mickey throws his knees into her gut.  
  
"She's strong," Mickey hisses, tipping forward a little to balance his weight harder against Gale. "Hurry up!"  
  
Gale tries to snatch at Mickey with one hand. He quits strangling her, grabs her wrists, and forces them to the mattress. Then Mickey glances at Stu. He's sitting on Dewey's back like a comically large cat, looking very, very self-assured, with a grin that looks like someone split his cheeks open with a knife splayed tight across his face and a crazed gleam even in his blind eye.  
  
"So," Billy says from behind them, and the room, once filled with chaos and struggle, falls silent, the air cleared by the Son's voice. "Bad time, but what's your favorite scary movie?"  
  
Mickey tightens his hold on Gale, if such a thing is possible, because, right now, he feels like the Son is using him as a seatbelt or a roll of duct tape, and he shoots her a grin. Gale's eyes are wide as saucers, lit with shock and uncertainty, but, strangely, not fear, and Mickey's both confused and angered by that.  
  
Mickey cherishes seeing the fear in the eyes of his victims the same way that a normal person—whatever normal means, anyway, because Mickey is pretty sure that, after forty or so years of existence, that  _normal_ is one of those words with no real definition—cherishes old photographs or memories or mementos of past travels. Right now, it would remind him of old times back at Windsor, but when he was at Windsor, it reminded him of strangling his best friend's kitten with his hoodie drawstrings when he was back in fifth grade. The fear reminded him of the way the kitten tried to scream despite having no air, and it reminded him of dropping it only after it had passed out and quit struggling. Mickey would love to be reminded of those times, and, honestly, he came here expecting to live life after death, and he's more than angry at Gale for not being what he wanted her to be. He's sure he's going to make her suffer even more, for that.  
  
"...Billy Loomis," Gale sputters.  
  
"He's dead," Dewey says, trying to spin his head around to see. Stu clamps it down to the mattress.   
  
The Son laughs.  
  
"It's simple movie magic. The killer always comes back for one last scare. I mean, you've been through this, what, four times? You really should have it down by now. There's dogs that train faster than you," he says. "I brought some friends, too. It's basically a playdate. A conjugal visit? Something. Jill?"  
  
"Whatever it is, it needs to be done," Jill says, voice low, emotionless.   
  
"Exactly my thought!"  
  
Billy steps to Stu's side, and Mickey spots the glint of the serrated knife gleaming in the Son's hand. He runs the tip along Dewey's cheekbone like it's filled with ink and he's drawing a line over the skin. Dewey winces.  
  
"Leave him alone," Gale hisses, a tiny whimper that even Mickey, inches from her face and staring straight into her eyes, barely hears.  
  
But again, there is no fear, not the way Mickey wishes there was. It is foreign, and Mickey is unable to navigate the thought process Gale must have to remain so defiant in the face of her impending death by the killers she believed were put to rest, slaughtered in their most powerful moments, years ago. Mickey has, basically, been put on an alien planet and not the planet he was resided for twenty years of his life, because that is the only place where any of this would make even a muted semblance of sense, for his victim not to be scared.   
  
However, he remembers Gale, one of the reasons he was foiled, and if there's anything he knows, it's that she's defied death so many times that it's remarkable that she even thinks she's less than immortal, and Mickey isn't even sure that she does. But no matter! This will be her final act whether she likes it or not. This night will not end in a semicolon, a place where the sentence could have stopped but didn't, but, rather, a period, a full stop. For all Mickey does not trust the Son, he knows—they both know—that Billy will see this through to the end.  
  
_You've got it, Mickey. Follow the Son's instruction.  
  
_ Mickey bows his head. Gale, evidently, takes this as him admitting weakness or letting down his guard and struggles against him with the fury of a caged, rabid alpha wolf, but her movements are rendered into feeble twitches, and she's left to watch through the corner of her eye as Billy taunts her husband.  
  
"Roman will be very pleased to hear what we've done here," the Son says. "He's a better dad than I ever had. Taught me everything I know. Well, that and... that and Tom Savini. The movies are my muse."  
  
Dewey swallows with an audible gulp.  
  
And the Son plunges the knife right where Dewey's head meets the nape of his neck.  
  
A gurgle locks in Dewey's throat; his flesh caves in around the knife, skin splitting into the indent that looks like someone pushing a finger into a sponge cake, and Mickey bites the inside of his cheek. Even though he's exposed to blood every day—the only people he's seen for a good twenty years or so, including himself, have all been drenched in it since the moment they died—Mickey never imagines blood as being this dark, this glossy. It's always a little redder and a little lighter in his head, like in the movies. But it's a beautiful thing, to see violence again and not have it directed toward himself or, dear God, his Charlie, and Mickey has not been more satisfied in years, maybe decades.   
  
The Son forces the knife deeper, deeper, until it pushes out Dewey's throat and into the mattress with a sickening squish, buried to the hilt.  
  
Billy grins.  
  
"One down," he snarls. "One little reporter to go."  
  
Stu rolls off of Dewey, who's lying comatose beneath him, eyes open and filled with desperate life but alarmingly glassy. Mickey looks over at Jill, stood next to Debbie.  
  
"My turn," Jill says. "Literally the most incompetent cop in the world. Didn't have me found out until it was almost too late... then again, that was everyone."  
  
"Yup, worst cop this side of _The Simpsons_ ," Stu adds.  
  
Jill smiles and grabs Dewey by the head. His eyes are still glassy, but the fear in them is the first thing anyone who walked in here would notice. She tugs his face up toward her, off the sheet, and then she looks at Gale.  
  
"I've still got my  _matching wound_ , you know. Where we are, they don't heal."  
  
There's a pause.  
  
"Son, knife, please."  
  
"Gladly. The Father likes his family ties... besides his mother and his sister, of course. But who likes those whores?" Billy passes Jill the knife, his grin still wide on his face, exposing all his teeth, which would probably be white if they weren't slick with his own blood.  
  
Jill, without missing a beat, stabs Dewey right in the shoulder. No reaction, except from her. She gets some kind of thrill out of it, pressing the knife in further until the blade is buried, twisting it against Dewey's collarbone to make more blood gush out, and all without the smile fading. Mickey, for as terrible as he is, and as guilty as he is of doing the same things Jill has done, is a little scared by her. He's thrilled by pain, too, but not the way  _she_ is. She is a bit too into it, to the point that Mickey would find it creepy if she were that into a book or a kitten or something totally innocent. It seems vaguely sexual—maybe she's been reminded of her time with Charlie. For all she's said to scorn him, all she's said to distance herself from the gun and the partnership they shared in life, she might just be hiding her true feelings.  
  
Or maybe it's just jealousy, and she's a sadist. Mickey's a sadist, too. It's incredibly possible.  
  
When Jill drops Dewey, Gale tries to speak, but words don't come out of her mouth, and Stu leans over and covers her lips with a huge palm anyway.  
  
"So," the Son says. "So, so, so. I wonder what this reminds me of. You know, the movies come after the real killers, because movies can only hope to be  _half_ as fucked as reality. My stewing in that prison taught me that. What do you think about that, Gale Weathers? Does seeing everything in person again make  _Stab_ a little more... realistic?"  
  
Gale mumbles something, defiance and grief mottled together in her bright eyes. Stu won't move his hand.  
  
Mickey licks his lips in anticipation.  
  
"Don't let her talk," the Son says. "I don't want to hear it."  
  
"Yeah, we aren't here for the nightly news!" Stu remarks, voice warbling with smug satisfaction at his own joke.   
  
"Come on, Billy!" Debbie says. "Kill her! Make Momma proud!"  
  
Billy passes the knife to Stu. Stu's eyes, even the blind one, widen, rounder than Mickey's ever seen them.  
  
"Two choices? It's like Christmas!"  
  
And Mickey waits his turn like he's been doing for twenty years.


End file.
